"It is Finished"

Good Friday: April 22, 2011: As the Pastor read the story of Jesus' final hours, I noticed the black organza that covered the banner hanging to my right. A breeze blowing through the church blew the bottom half of the cloth off the banner. I wondered: Will the breeze continue to blow the cloth throughout the service? Or, if it stops, might it stop at the moment that Jesus dies in the well-known story of His crucifixion? I continued to look periodically, but found myself focused on the story during the scourge against Jesus. Sometime after the crucifixion, I looked up again to see that the breeze was no longer blowing the cloth. As the story reached the final moments of Jesus' earthly life, the cloth of mourning was still. The wind that had caused the cloth to flutter and expose the banner was quiet, as if to say, "It is finished."

Good Friday services are filled with emotion. The black organza blowing in the breeze, then resting in peace at such a moment, brought a feeling of peace to a moment of trauma.