I just finished reading yet another Philip Yancey book, The Jesus I Never Knew. As I read the concluding passage of the
book I could not help but think how applicable it is in light of the tragedy at
Sandy Hook Elementary School.
In the book, Yancy references a famous sermon that you may
be familiar with called "It's Friday, but Sunday's comin.'" The sermon contrasts Good Friday with
Resurrection Sunday. Yancy takes
it a step further saying that today we live in that in-between day, the
Saturday of darkness, grieving, confusion, and uncertainty.
“Can we trust that God can make something
holy and beautiful and good out of a world that includes Bosnia and Rwanda [and the Holocaust] and
inner-city ghettoes and jammed prisons (and
now Sandy Hook) in the richest nation on earth? It’s Saturday on planet earth; will Sunday ever come?
That dark, Golgothan
Friday can only be called Good because of what happened on Easter Sunday, a day
which gives a tantalizing clue to the riddle of the universe. Easter opened up a crack in a universe
winding down toward entropy and decay, sealing the promise that someday God
will enlarge the miracle of Easter to cosmic scale.
It is a good thing to
remember that in the cosmic drama, we live out our days on Saturday, the
in-between day with no name.”
Why are we left in this state? Yancy’s conclusion is that this is the cost of giving humans
a free will, a will to choose God’s love or to reject it. Through the tragedy of this particular
Friday in Connecticut, we see once again the high cost this proposition brings
to the world, and the idea is unfathomable from our perspective.
All we can do is cling to this
hope… “Sunday’s comin’.”
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