It’s ironic today is called Good Friday, but in retrospect we understand that better than unbelievers. I recently had a Q&A with Agape Professional Counseling, and my clinical depression story reached a wider audience. You can read that interview here.

What happened 2000 years ago on Golgotha this day was a dark time for the remnant who followed Jesus. What has has transpired in my life has led to many dark times, but that singular moment on the cross for Jesus is setting me free from a debilitating illness I will battle for the rest of my life. Can God take it away? Yes, but as of this writing he has not. Those of us who battle addictions and mental illness count all joy when we face trials of many kinds like the Apostle Paul. We don’t know what Paul’s thorn in the flesh was, but we do know God didn’t take it away. God doesn’t always take our crosses away. I write this in the morning as I drink my third cup of coffee, and the fact that his mercies are new every morning passes through my thinking. I long for my Father’s presence as you do, and when I contemplate lives like King David, his son Solomon, and Paul, as I wrote about just sentences ago, I think about their undying pursuit of a God who is closer than the blood in our veins. There are so many things to distract us from pursuing the Father, and like our illness those things will be forever with us here on the old Earth.

The new Earth, or as some know it Heaven, will have no sickness or death. Our changed bodies will be eternal, and we will gaze upon the Father, Son and Spirit in their true state. Yahweh will not have to shield our eyes like he had to do for Moses when he passed before him. We will sit, stand and walk with him the way the Savior does today. The fact that those two beings are one is another mystery we will come to understand completely. We’ve been accused of being polytheistic, but God is one, and my explanation is that he is so great that he must be explained the way we have come to understand him as Father, Son and Spirit. We can study that for 100 years and never grasp the greatness it represents.

All I know today is that I am beyond thankful my LORD and Savior endured the pain on the cross, and even more than that he was raised on the third day. The crucifixion was dark and unmerciful, but the resurrection was light and power over darkness. There is literally nothing that separates us now from an all loving and all powerful God.

May our hope, a confident expectation, always be rooted in that. He is risen!