It was utterly shocking, shocking to the whole created realm. From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land (Matthew 27:45). The sun’s light was withheld for three hours in the middle of that Middle Eastern afternoon. Three hours of darkness and trembling as “the earth shook and the rocks split” (Matthew 27:51-52). The reality of the Cross caused the earth to quake and the sun to hide.
John Donne captures in his sonnet Good Friday the response of the natural realm to the crucifixion of Jesus. He notes that in Scripture we read no one can see God and live. He is too holy for humans to see. So what must it have been like to see Jesus, the Son of God, Creator of heaven and earth, die? To see Jesus die caused creation to hide and shake. John Donne’s poem expresses creation’s response to the crucifixion:
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.[1]
The death of Jesus makes the cosmos quiver. Was it in fear, or in sadness, or in awe? Creation took notice. Men and women jeered, gawked, rushed on to get where they were going. Only a handful of people seemed to care, but creation trembled.
Devotional Activity
Ponder today the mystery of the natural, material world responding to the Cross of Christ. To see the Lord Jesus die was to see all hope and goodness die. To see the Lord die was also to see all hope and goodness fully alive. What might you create in response?
[1] John Donne, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward” – lines 17-20. The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne, ed. Charles M. Coffin. The Modern Library, New York. p. 258. The poem was written in 1613.
The content of this post is from All Creation Sings by Luann Budd.