A little girl stands in the doorway of what used to be her bedroom. The storm took the roof off that side of the house two nights ago. Her mattress is soaked, her school books are pulp, and there is a piece of zinc lying across the floor where her bed was. Her father has been working since dawn, dragging out ruined furniture. She tugs his shirt and asks, very quietly, “Daddy, what happened?”
His first instinct is to steer her away. Go and help Mummy. Don’t look at that. It’s all right. It will be fixed. Every parent understands the impulse. We want to shield children from what is broken.
But the question is a real one, and it deserves a real answer.
The cross we would rather not look at
Good Friday asks a similar question of all of us. Many churches prefer an empty cross, and there is good reason: the tomb is empty and Christ is risen. But it is possible to hurry past Friday so quickly that we never really look at what happened there.
On the cross Jesus prayed the opening words of Psalm 22: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1). The psalm goes on to describe a person poured out like water, bones out of joint, strength dried up, surrounded by people who mock. It is not a comfortable picture. It is not meant to be.
Isaiah, centuries earlier, had described the suffering servant this way: “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5, NKJV).
To stand still and look at that, to actually ask “what happened?”, is part of Christian faith. We do not skip to Sunday by pretending Friday was not real.
When the damage is in our own home
Households face their own Fridays. A house lost to fire. A foreclosure letter. A separation that means someone moves out and the family home is sold. A parent’s death and the slow emptying of the rooms. Children see all of this. They may not understand the details, but they know something has gone badly wrong, and they want to know what.
When adults hide it, children often fill the silence with their own explanations, and those are frequently worse than the truth. A child who is told nothing about why they are moving may decide it is because of something they did. A child who sees their parents whispering over papers at the kitchen table may imagine a catastrophe far bigger than the real one.
Honesty, pitched at their age, is usually kinder. Something like: “The storm was very strong and it broke the roof. We are sad about your room, and it is okay for you to be sad too. We are safe. We are going to fix it, and it might take a while.” Or, for an older child facing a move: “We can’t afford to stay in this house any more. That is a grown-up problem, not your fault. We will find somewhere, and we will still be a family there.”
Looking long enough to grieve
There is something here for the adults as well. When our house is damaged or lost, the pressure to be strong and practical can mean we never stop and take in what has happened. There are insurance forms, contractors to call, relatives to update. The grief gets folded away with the ruined clothes.
Good Friday gives us permission to stand still. Jesus Himself did not pretend on the cross. He cried out. The psalm He prayed is full of anguish, and it is in the Bible, which means God is not embarrassed by it. We can bring our own “why?” to Him too, standing in the ruined bedroom or sitting in the car outside a house that is no longer ours.
Friday is not the end
Psalm 22 does not end in despair. Later verses turn towards praise, towards God who “has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted” (Psalm 22:24). And the story of the cross does not end on Friday. But the hope of Sunday means more to those who have really looked at Friday.
The same is true in a family. A child who was told the truth about the storm, who was allowed to be sad, and who then watched the roof go back on, has learned something deep: that bad things are real, that grown-ups can be honest about them, and that broken things can be mended. That is not a bad foundation for faith.
For reflection
- Is there something hard happening in your home that your children have noticed but nobody has explained?
- What loss connected to a house or home have you rushed past without grieving?
Lord Jesus, You did not look away from suffering; You carried it. Give us courage to look honestly at what has been broken in our homes, and to tell our children the truth with gentleness. Meet us in our Fridays, and teach us to wait for Your Sunday. Amen.
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