How fitting that Good Friday is the first day of this year for a visit to my fire escape.  A few weeks ago, I was gazing out my window at snow-covered wrought iron; piles of flakes dumped from a gray sky onto my poor-man’s balcony.  And today, I grabbed my deck chair (beach towel), fuzzy socks and fleece shirt (it’s still cold in the shade!) and planted myself across from the blooming cherry blossoms.  An activity I wouldn’t have had time for had I been at work and not sick.  And then, like a gift from heaven carried across the wind, the scent of the blossoms reaches me and I am reminded that everything I have is a gift.  Everything beautiful in my life began in darkness, with Someone else’s loss.

Who has believed our message?  To whom will the Lord reveal his saving power? My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, sprouting from a root in dry and sterile ground.  There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him.  He was despised and rejected–a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief.  We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by.  He was despised, and we did not care.  Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.  And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins!  But he was wounded and crushed for our sins.  He was whipped, and we were healed!  All of us have strayed away like sheep.  We have left God’s paths to follow our own.  Yet the Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.  He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word.  He was led as a lamb to the slaughter.  And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth.  From prison and trial they led him away to his death.  But who among the people realized that he was dying for their sins–that he was suffering their punishment?  He had done no wrong, and he never deceived anyone.  But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.  But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and fill him with grief.  Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have a multitude of children, many heirs.  He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord’s plan will prosper in his hands.  When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied.  And because if what he has experienced, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.  I will give him the honors of one who is mighty and great, because he exposed himself to death.  He was counted among those who were sinners.  He bore the sins of many and interceded for sinners.

Darkness will never look the same again…and light could never be more glorious.