On a night of great darkness,
You wept and prayed.
Seeing man's wickedness,
whom your blood did spray.
The cup of wrath in full view,
You sweat your holy blood.
In great exersion,
we see your holy Love.
On the night of great darkness,
You could have ran.
Judas was coming with your prosecutors,
but you accepted the Father's plan.
Judas in betrayal softly kissed Your cheek,
You called him Your friend, an underserved degree.
As they bound you with ropes You didn't deserve,
You siliently listen to their accusation though they were all absurd.
Your followers fled, scattered as scripture fortold,
Even Peter denied though he thought he was bold.
All night they bruised You and beat You,
You turned the other cheek.
Then came the trial,
they had the Option to choose
Do you want Barabbas the killer? Or the King of the Jews?
Almost in unison they pled to free Barabbas,
Pilate, in water his hand he washed.
They flogged You, they beat You ,they spit in Your holy face,
One who is only deserving of Honor and Glory put through disgrace.
Then came the cross and the march to Calavery,
You struggle to carry the weight of that Tree.
On Golgotha they laid you on the cross,
Nailed Your hands and Your feet
and like the bronze snake of Moses they lifted You up.
You hang there bleeding from the wounds they inflicted
And the cry of Your heart is for their Forgiveness.
WHAT LOVE IS THIS? WHAT LOVE CAN TOUCH THIS?
In agony You cried it is finished.
The wrath of God poured out on your frail human frame,
Your heart stopped beating your limp body just hanged.
What mercy is this? That You can forgive?
A wretch like me who was so dead in my sin.
So lost and self-righteous and selfish and dark,
But you are the light and you lighten my heart.
Cold and exposed in my wickedness I cried,
but you came and your clothed me with garments of white.
What Forgiveness is this? the Sweetest refrain,
that Grace comes to the chief of sinners,an undeserved gain.
Then the cup is thought again, filled with God's wrath, filled because of me.
You drank willfully so that I can be free.

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Matthew Guldner