Week three of lockdown. Good Friday, April 2020. I wrote this one in real time, which is the only reason I’d share it. Some things are only honest when they’re written in the middle of them.
Growing up, Good Friday meant the start of a great weekend. No work, good company, life lived to the full. The religious significance was somewhere in the background, acknowledged but not really felt.
Over the years, that quietly changed.
I don’t often write about faith. But sitting in lockdown on what felt like the bleakest Good Friday I’d ever experienced, it seemed the right moment to try.
I didn’t come to belief through a crisis point. I’ve never hit rock bottom, never reached a place where faith was the only door left open. For me it’s always kind of been there… and as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to see His hand more clearly in the things around me. People I’ve met. Situations that shouldn’t have worked out but did. Coincidences that, when they stack up, become harder and harder to dismiss.
Good Friday that year felt significant in a way I hadn’t expected. Isolation was insulating us all from how hard things actually were out there. Behind the quiet of our street and the daily routine, something genuinely dark was happening in the world.
And a few nights later, at 3am, I couldn’t sleep.
I’d had a few drinks and woken up too early. Or maybe there was just more on my mind than usual. The virus was getting closer to people we knew. I lay there thinking about prayer… which is a funny thing to be thinking about at that hour, if you’re not sure you entirely believe in it.
What I’ve come to think is that prayer has three parts. Looking back at the day honestly, saying sorry for what didn’t go right, and accepting that imperfection is ok. Then noticing what was good in the day, and saying thank you for it. Then looking forward, and asking for help with what’s coming.
That last part is where my mind went that night. Asking that in all this pause and isolation, people might find space to feel something they’d been too busy to notice before. And for those fighting the virus… that they might reach out, and find comfort there.
I’m not sure I’d write it quite the same way now. But I’m glad I wrote it then.
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Peace
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