Good Friday
Love’s Tenacity
Reflection By Gary Manning
[Love] bears all things, … endures all things.
- 1 Corinthians 13:7
My maternal grandparents were married for well over fifty years. Because they were people of a time and place—poor, hardscrabble share-cropping farmers in rural Louisiana at the beginning of the twentieth century—their expressions of love towards each other probably wouldn’t be recognized by anyone whose vision of love comes from the Hallmark Channel. Sometimes they raised their voices at each other. Sometimes they seemed more aggravated than enamored with each other. Sometimes they just seemed worn out. But when my grandmother died, my grandfather never quite recovered. They had been partners who had traversed the difficulties and hardships of their life by counting on each other. In short, their resilient love had endured.
Good Friday means many things to folks, but at the center of what Christians commemorate on this day is the embodiment of God’s love. Jesus chooses to so fully enter into the injustice and suffering of this world that we can forever know God’s love is with us, even in those moments when we feel most isolated and alone. God’s love bears cruelty and pain. And God’s love endures. This is a tenacious love which will not succumb to any of our culture’s notions that love is somehow simple or easy.
Every year, Good Friday reminds us of the unyielding depth of God’s love—a love that will not relent; a love that will not surrender; a love that holds the entire world securely, and forever, within its loving embrace.
Making it Personal: Some of us who are reading this are experiencing suffering of some sort in our lives right now. How does the love manifested in Jesus’ death on the cross help you, or how has it helped you, to “bear all things,” and “endure all things”?
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We also invite you to listen to the Living Compass Spirituality and Wellness Podcast hosted by Scott Stoner. This is a year-round, weekly podcast; however, during Lent, there will be two new episodes each week to enrich your experience of our Lenten readings on Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit.
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