Planted in Death, Blooming in Grace
Good Friday Reflection Lamentations 3:1–63 | Psalm 22 | Romans 8:31–39 | Luke 23:18–49
I've always been struck by the quiet miracle that happens beneath the winter soil. A tulip bulb that is dry, misshapen, and lifeless to all appearances is nestled in the frozen earth. It doesn't look like much. To the untrained eye, it seems dead. Yet someone believed enough to plant it. To tuck it into the darkness, to wait.
That's what Good Friday is—a planting day. The day something precious is buried. The day hope seems to die. We hear the raw cries echoing through scripture— "I am the man who has seen affliction..." "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" "They divide my garments among them..."
These aren't just ancient words; they're the language of our hearts broken open. The sound of humanity stripped bare. And Jesus doesn't stand at a distance from this pain. He wades into the very center of it, carrying it all.
Today isn't just about watching Christ die—it's his invitation for us to bring what needs to die within us. What are you carrying that needs burial? Your fear? Your shame? That guilt that follows you like a shadow? Your pride? The sin that entangles? The despair that whispers there's no way forward?
The cross stands ready, not just as the place where Jesus was crucified, but where these broken pieces of ourselves can be surrendered and laid to rest. Like that tulip bulb, unremarkable and covered in soil, so too are the parts of ourselves we believe beyond redemption. Yet this is precisely where God does God’s most transformative work. As Paul reminds us, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?... No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."
Nothing can separate us from this love, even when darkness covers the earth, because God is already in the ground. Already in the silence. Already at work when everything appears finished. You might not see it today. You might not feel it tomorrow. But death will not have the final word.
The tulip knows a secret we often forget: being buried is not the same as being finished. The grave is never the last chapter. The season of darkness always surrenders to dawn. So bring it all—lay down what weighs heavy on your soul. Place in the soil of grace those parts of yourself you thought could never flourish again. Let this be your day of holy surrender, of trusting that God is still writing your story. And when that stone rolls away and morning breaks through the darkness, you will rise. We will rise. Not as we were— but as something far more beautiful: transformed, renewed, and alive with grace.
Just as the unremarkable bulb we place in the ground will one day push through the soil in a brilliant explosion of color, so too will the broken parts we surrender on Good Friday emerge transformed beyond recognition. What we bury today in faith, our wounds, our failures, our limitations, God will raise up as a new creation: vibrant, alive, and reflecting God’s glory in ways we never imagined possible when we first placed them in God’s hands.
Amen.