Lenten Devotion: 3-25-16

Friday March 25, 2015

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.                                                 John 19:25

Thought:

I have no words.  I have never watched an execution. I cannot imagine seeing someone I love murdered.  The human body seems incapable of holding this scene.  I have no words.

But the image of Mary speaks.  She refuses to let death separate her from her son.  She touches Him, holds Him, and remembers.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8).  Nothing can stop God’s love from reaching into our souls when there are no words and nothing to feel, except bottomless pain.  I wonder if Mary was kept by that love, in that moment, even without knowing it.  I wonder if we, when we are at our nadir, are kept by this love, even without knowing it.

My prayer on this awful day is this, God, hold us within Your love when we rage, when the world rages, when we cannot hold ourselves.  Hold us when words, and people, and emotions, and drugs and alcohol, and spending, and nothing else will.  Hold us and when our ears cease to listen — whisper into our very cells, nothing can separate us, nothing in all of creation.  Nothing else will suffice this night.