5 Apr 2026 (Pastoral Page) FROM GOLGOTHA TO GLORY: TURNING LENTEN LAMENT INTO EASTER PRAISE

by Ps Lai Keet Keong

There is a sacred rhythm woven into the fabric of our faith. It is the pendulum swing from the silence of the tomb to the shout of the empty grave. For anyone walking through a season of sorrow - whether it be the loss of a loved one, a shattered dream, or a prolonged waiting - the move from lament to praise can feel not only difficult but impossible. Grief has a weight that pins us to the ground, much like the heavy stone that sealed Jesus’ tomb. Yet, the bridge from Good Friday to Easter Sunday reveals that this journey is not about denying pain; it is about allowing faith to reorient our mindset toward the God who specializes in resurrection.

Lament is not a sign of weak faith; it is the language of honest faith. The Psalmists modeled this for us, crying out in raw agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) - words Jesus Himself echoed from the cross. Good Friday represents the ultimate lament: the sky darkening, the earth trembling, the Savior crying out in anguish. It is the day we confront the reality of suffering, betrayal, and death. Comfort, in this space, is the balm of His presence. It is the quiet assurance that we do not grieve alone. Just as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus tenderly wrapped the body of Jesus and laid Him in the tomb, the Holy Spirit meets us in our sorrow, not always to remove the trial, but to enter into the midst of it with us.

But the biblical narrative never ends on a Friday. It always moves toward the Sunday. The key that unlocks the door from Lenten lament into Easter praise is a deliberate shift in mindset - one anchored not in the circumstances of the cross, but in the empty tomb that follows.

Our mindset determines whether we remain stuck in the grief of Good Friday or whether we begin to live in the reality of Easter Sunday. In the natural course of sorrow, our thoughts spiral inward. We replay our failures, rehearse our fears, and magnify the darkness. To move toward praise, we must engage in what the Apostle Paul calls the “renewing of the mind” (Romans 12:2). This is an active discipline. It is choosing to filter reality not through the lens of present pain but through the lens of God’s past faithfulness and the promise of resurrection morning.

Consider the disciples on that devastating Saturday between the crucifixion and the resurrection. They hid in fear, convinced that their hopes had been buried with their Rabbi. Their mindset was fixed on the tragedy of the cross. Yet, they did not yet know that the cross was not the end - it was the turning point. When Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb on Sunday morning, she did not find a dead body; she found an angel and an empty grave. The shift from despair to joy required her to stop looking for the living among the dead and to embrace the reality that what was meant for evil, God had turned for ultimate good.

This transition requires us to stop waiting for our feelings to catch up to our faith. Praise is often an act of the will before it is an emotion of the heart. When we choose to sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” even when our souls feel as heavy as the stone at the sepulcher, we break the gravitational pull of despair. Praise reorients our spirit. It shifts our gaze from the size of our problem to the sovereignty of a God who rolled the stone away.

Faith is the bridge between lament and joy. Faith believes that the same God who walked with us through the fire of Good Friday is already preparing an Easter Sunday. Faith trusts that our current suffering is not the final chapter. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” This verse does not minimize our pain, but it contextualizes it within the grand narrative of redemption. When we adopt this eternal mindset, we realize that joy is not dependent on the absence of suffering, but on the presence of the risen Lord within it.

Joy, in the biblical sense, is not the fleeting happiness that comes when life goes well. It is the deep, unshakable gladness that comes from knowing that death has been defeated. It is the fruit of a mindset that has been trained to see that the cross leads to the crown, and that weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning - specifically, that first Easter morning.

To move from lament into praise, we must give ourselves permission to grieve fully, but we must not set up camp in the tomb. We accept the comfort God offers - through His Word, through His people, through the reality of the resurrection - and then we choose to take a step toward praise. Perhaps that step is simply saying, “Lord, this feels like Good Friday, but I trust You for Easter.” Perhaps it is declaring the resurrection power over a situation that feels dead. Perhaps it is choosing to worship, knowing that the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead dwells in us.

The journey from Golgotha to glory is a pilgrimage of faith. It is not a one-time event but a daily decision to align our mindset with the truth of the Gospel: that the cross does not have the final word, that sorrow lasts for the night, but joy comes in the resurrection morning. When we anchor our hope in the God who walked out of the grave, we discover that even our deepest laments can become the soil from which our loudest praises grow. And in that space, we find not the absence of pain, but the presence of a joy that the stone - no matter how heavy - cannot contain.