Depleted

It's Good Friday. My routine today involves a little bit of shopping (yes, I left Easter Bunny purchases for the last minute), Good Friday service and Rise, the worship program presented by the Nativity youth, and, after everyone goes to bed, watching the Passion of the Christ.  

I'm on the tail end of what I think was food poisoning, which means God gave me the perfect physical condition-depletion-to contemplate this very holy day. The up side is that fasting will be easy, for the first time ever! Of course, a few days of a stomach bug is not worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence with the Christ's suffering and crucifixion. But we all have our own crosses, some tiny, like a stomach illness, and some great. We can use these experiences to think of Christ.

What must it have felt like for Jesus to be that physically, emotionally, and spiritually depleted? In the Passion, the scene that impacts me the most is when, during the Way of the Cross, Christ falls, his cross crushing him, and he turns his head to see Mary looking at him with great angst. And in all this depletion, he says, "see, Mother, I make all things new." Maybe it's the Mom in me that makes me choke up at that scene. But it's also my unbelief that anyone can take such an eternal view in such a painful situation of apparent doom.

Only one Person can do that-make all things new in the midst of the greatest depletion ever suffered.