Three Words That Changed It All
“It is Finished.”
Oh if we could only unravel the depths of that cry.
Two weekends ago, as we gathered to celebrate Easter, our hearts were focused on the Cross and Resurrection. We rehearsed the agony of that splintered body, broken in two, but also celebrated the glory ensuing three days later: this same Jesus rose from the grave and defeated death.
How can we unpack the glory of Christ’s finished work on the cross? Is there a way to capture the depths of this melody of truth?
These three words, “It is finished,” were a lifeline to me several years ago. My youngest pixie and I were in and out of one doctor’s office after another, trying to uncover the diagnosis of her unrelenting cough. Persistent, it kept her up night after night for months.
As anxiety crept upon me one night and dread filled my spirit, the Lord directed me to a quote I had read a few weeks before from Lilias Trotter in A Blossom in the Desert :
“And in every inward experience and every outward bit of service, He puts the seal of His ‘Amen’ in a way that is known to us and to Him. That inward hush of the ‘It is finished.’”
How beautiful is that?
The inward hush…the Holy Ghost whispering, “Peace be still. It is finished.”
The finished work of Christ continues in our lives day to day, moment by moment. He speaks to us in the most intimate of ways … a love language that is known to only us, and Him. And He assures us that it is done. Anything we will ever need for this life we are living on earth, has been completed. The ending written.
The remedy to fear, doubt, and heartache is the cross of Christ.
When Jesus’ crucified body died upon Golgotha, He took all the fear, all the heartache, all the death of this world and defeated it crying, “It is finished!”
I love that this quote by Lilias Trotter is found under the heading “Quiet Certainty.” What a lovely caption! Certainty…something that is so fleeting in this fallen world in which we live. We live in a day and age where nothing seems certain.
Often, life does not seem to make sense. Doubt plagues, questions arise, spirits sink. But when we have that quiet certainty that can only come from God, what a beautiful gift it is!
We can rest under the arms that carry us, the arms that spread open wide on a splintered cross so that it ALL would be finished. The quiet certainty of His “Amen.”
In Gracelaced Ruth Chou Simons puts it this way,
“With nail-scarred hands, He provides His strength in exchange for our weariness and reminds us to let Him carry us. That’s what His outstretched arms are for.”
Oh those beautiful arms, stretched out wide for the whole world, providing and securing quiet certainty! Those hands carried all our burdens and nailed them to the cross. The voice that shook the ground with His sure death and quiet cry of victory: “It is finished.”
Are there any better arms to have underneath us than the ones that provided It is Finished?
We can move forward in confidence that all we need for this life has been secured by the blood of the Lamb. We can sing a song of victory in our darkest of nights because of the empty tomb. We can live the lyrics of the cross, a hallelujah shout of quiet certainty, “It is finished!”
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