Our Walk of Suffering

Finding Hope and Holy Purpose in the Shadow of the Cross

By Shelly Esser

You can’t look forward to all the joys of the Easter day celebration of Christ’s resurrection without first looking at Good Friday and Jesus’s death on the cross. I think if we’re honest, we prefer Easter Sunday. Why? Because we don’t like to talk about suffering and pain, especially if it relates to us. Certainly, that’s understandable. Especially in our feel-good culture, pain and suffering is something we want to avoid at all costs and, even as Christians, we think somehow we should get a pass. We’d rather think about the risen Jesus in all His glory and enjoy the Easter baskets and bunnies—the fun parts of Easter.

We think if we forget about Good Friday, we won’t experience a cross of our own. But sooner or later, all of us will have a walk of suffering. In Philippians 1:29 we’re told, “Unto you it is given…to suffer.” Scripture never promises a life free of heartache. All of us will have to bear up under some cross toward a hill that can become for us a Golgotha-like experience. Maybe it’s a cross of illness, a cross of a broken relationship, or a cross of deep emotional or spiritual pain. We live in a broken and fallen world after all.

I will never forget the dramatic image of Jesus walking with the weight of the cross on His scourged body up the hill to Golgotha in the movie The Passion of the Christ. The utter agony. The brokenness. The sense of complete abandonment from the Father. I remember having to look away so many times because the pain of watching what Jesus did for me was just too hard to emotionally absorb.