Good Friday
I had a conversation with someone earlier on the week who was looking forward to this weekend as she gets a four day weekend. I said it must be nice to be off on Good Friday and Easter Monday to which she looked a bit puzzled and asked what Good Friday is. Now, this is an intelligent young woman but she never knew why she gets this Friday as a day off. So I told her that today is the day that Jesus was crucified. More blank looks. So I told her the story.
Good Friday is a name that needs some explanation. How is it good? Who is it good for? It wasn’t good for Jesus who suffered the most horrific death, so brutal even the Romans eventually abolished crucifixion. It wasn’t good for Jesus who endured a sham of a trial before a coward after being betrayed by a member of His inner circle. It wasn’t good to die in pain.
But it was good for us as humanity. It was good that God decided to let someone else take our sin upon Himself. It is good for us that we don’t have to pay the price for our own sin, something that we could never do. It is good for us that we can go before a Holy God with confidence because of what one man did. When God looks at us He sees the blood shed by Jesus at the crucifixion, not the sin that pollutes our relationship with God. This day is the most momentous in history, apart from Sunday coming of course.
Today is the best day in the Christian calendar for devotional meditation. There is opportunity to go on walks of witness and to go to three or six hour services that consider the various words of Jesus when He was on the cross. It is sad to me that Christians don’t sometimes bother with going to church on this day when this day matters so much. It shows a lack of understanding of what this day means. It means everything. It makes me even sadder that I have to explain to people what Good Friday is, but at the same time I am glad because it lets me tell others about this wonderful man Jesus. All the better because people now have little preconceived ideas about what church is like.
Jesus dies for us this day, thanks be to God.