Today is Good Friday. Our church doesn’t own its building, so we won’t be going to a service tonight. Instead, we’ll be watching Acts 3&4 of When the Levees Broke. While watching the first half last night I had to keep my eyes on my knitting to keep from dissolving in tears every five minutes. It’s shocking to see so many people suffering so greatly, under a baking hot sun with help so frustratingly unavailable. Why those people couldn’t have gotten food and water dropped to them is unfathomable to me.

Here is the text of my favorite Good Friday hymn, written in 1707 by Isaac Watts:

Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker died,
For man the creature’s sin.

Thus might I hide my blushing face
While His dear cross appears,
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
And melt my eyes to tears.

But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe:
Here, Lord, I give my self away
’Tis all that I can do.