Tempted by suffering: A meditation for the day before Easter

By Mark A. Taylor

Today, in these quiet hours after Good Friday and before Easter, we awaken alone with nothing to ponder except the body of Jesus in a sealed grave. It’s too early for the hallelujahs of resurrection morning. And in our world so full of suffering, we’re glad to put behind us images of crucifixion and bloodshed.

But there lies his lifeless frame, shrouded and silent. Are we willing to linger beside our Savior’s abused, battered body, finally at rest inside a donated sepulcher? Is it possible to pause there and realize an opportunity for ourselves? Are we able to consider his sacrifice and acknowledge, if only for a moment, our own tombs of disappointment or discouragement, failure or brokenness? Are we willing to seek medicine for our own pain by embracing the fact of his?

Our best companion

If so, we will find Scripture a ready companion. God’s Word is not silent about suffering. But neither does it concede that suffering is without hope or purpose.

The Psalms, for example, are riddled with complaints and cries to God about the unfairness of life. And yet time and time again, usually before his lament is finished, the psalmist praises God because God alone offers him hope.

We have the testimony of Job, whose suffering surely was wider and deeper than what most of us have experienced. And yet we discover that God never ignored his ordeal.

And James, the Lord’s own brother, who knew Jesus had risen from the grave, did not let some vision of eternal glory blind him to the hard reality of earthly distress. Instead, he responds to the certainly of this life’s troubles by saying, “Consider it pure joy . . . whenever you face trials of many kinds.”

Our surest path

And here, in this revolutionary advice, we see a key to coping with our own unjust setbacks. We stop short of cursing life’s complications as we discover what they can accomplish in us. “You know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance,” James reminds his readers, but that’s not all. “Let perseverance finish its work,” he continues, “so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

He’s saying that suffering polishes our rough edges, equips us to be and do our very best. “What is God’s will for my life?” Perhaps we discover the surest answer to that oft-asked question by choosing the seldom-sought solution on the rough road before us. On that rocky path we discover what won’t be seen on any speedy, smooth throughway. The professor and poet Scott Cairns seems to echo the insight of James when he writes, “. . . the hard way is pretty much the only way most of us ever manage to learn anything.”

Our understanding Savior

Even many nonbelievers would agree with him, but we Christians have something more. And this is the thought that can sustain us on the morning after Good Friday. We have a Savior, God himself, who suffered exactly as we are suffering. The writer of Hebrews calls him our high priest, the intercessor to God on our behalf, and then explains his help to us: Jesus is not “unable to empathize with our weaknesses,” the Scripture says, because Jesus “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”

We may remember lust or lying or laziness when we read of temptation, but today let’s add suffering to the list. Let us remember Jesus pleading with God in the Garden for some substitute to save him from crucifixion. But instead, he obeyed and waited without guile for the band that would lead him to his death. Let us hear the shrill taunts of the crowd at Calvary: “Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” “He saved others, but he can’t save himself!” But his only response to their ignorance and blasphemy was, “Father, forgive them.” Which of us, imbued with the power he possessed would not have used it to escape the agony he endured?

And which of us, living with an errant child or terminal diagnosis or impossible job or besetting sin has not pled with God just to take it away?

But most often he does not. And when, with clinched fist, we cry out, “Why?” at least we can know Jesus understands. He will not let us suffer alone. He will provide us a way, some way, to cope: “He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear,” Paul said. If my trial tempts me to doubt or despair or disobedience, I can remember this: God will help me deal with the difficulty even if he calls me to endure it.

And God will not leave us forever at this tomb. Easter isn’t here yet, but it is coming. Easter is coming! And our anticipation of that bright tomorrow, combined with the promise of God’s comforting presence today, can sustain us through any lonely Saturday we may face.

Photos by Sasha Freemind and Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

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This post originally appeared April 3, 2021.