It’s Frustrating… | Good Friday 2020


It’s Good Friday, and we aren’t able to attend our local congregation. Our family misses our brothers and sisters in Christ immensely. We miss the faces, handshakes, hugs, smiles, voices, most of all, the hearing of God’s Word and reception of Christ’s flesh and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. It’s frustrating. 

It would be easy to simply become mad with the situation, to grow disheartened, to allow this frustration to take root and spill forth. But I cannot do this. I have a responsibility as head of my house to lead my family and to train up my children in the way they are to go. (Proverbs 22:6a) 

There is a yearning in every member of my family to be with our fellow saints. This time will come again, and I pray it will come soon. For now, my responsibility is to lead my children to the cross of Christ. 

Being Good Friday, we will hold family devotions, we will sing hymns, we will pray for you our neighbor, and we will participate in Good Friday services being streamed over the internet. As we use this time to hear and ponder the Word of God, we will also, as parents, use the time to teach our children to yearn for the company of saints as we do. In other words, we will guide them to the cross of Good Friday. By our actions, by our words, and by our devotion. It is only through the cross we can come to the Easter joy that awaits us all. 


In this holy Triduum, I pray you will not grow weary. If sin has filled your home, repent. If your words have been filled with wickedness, confess. If the inability to be physically present with the saints of God has caused you to become lax in your devotion to Christ, turn from your laziness. Turn to Christ and His Word. “The Word of the Lord remains forever.” (1 Peter 1:25) 

In troubling times, what comfort these words are to hear. The world may pass away, but the Word of God stands forever. Let us pray that our eyes and our hearts are focused on this precise Word of God. A Word that leads God’s children of every age to the cross of Good Friday and one day, the joy of the final Easter when we are all raised again. +INJ+

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