What's so Good About Good Friday?

 

At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.  And at three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" (which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?")  When some of those standing near heard this, they said, "Listen, he's calling Elijah."  Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink.  "Now leave him alone.  Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down," he said.  With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.  The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.  And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" ~Mark 15:33-39

What's so good about Good Friday?  This is a question I have pondered in my heart over these many years.  After all, this is the day our Lord and Savior, Jesus, suffered an excruciatingly painful and ignominious death on a cross.  Shouldn't we be calling Good Friday the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Friday?

Bishop Justin Holcomb of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida offers some insight as to why this holy day is called "good."

Still, why call the day of Jesus' death "Good Friday" instead of "Bad Friday" or something similar?  Some Christian traditions do take this approach.  In German, for example, the day is called Karfreitag, or "Sorrowful Friday."  In English, in fact, the origin of the term "Good" is debated; some believe it developed from an older name, "God's Friday."  Regardless of the origin, the name Good Friday is entirely appropriate because the suffering and death of Jesus, as terrible as it was, marked the dramatic culmination of God's plan to save his people from their sins.

Good for us.  No, wait!  Grand and glorious for us!

Because of Jesus' willingness to obey His Father's plan, we are forgiven our sins, once and for all.  And we can look forward to the coming Easter celebration with hope and joy, and the promise of a renewed relationship with our Father in heaven.

But on Good Friday, let us all take time to see ourselves sitting at the foot of that cross.  Let us become Mary and the disciple whom Jesus loved, who witnessed His immeasurable suffering.

Let us be fully present for our Lord as He gives His all for us.

Let us weep and mourn and pray.

And let us give thanks always for God's undeserved gifts of forgiveness and grace because Jesus took the cross of sin upon Himself for our salvation.

Amen!

See, I am Doing a New Thing!

 

See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. ~Isaiah 34:19

This spring, we living in northwest Georgia have set record pollen counts, with a week ago Saturday topping the charts with a whopping 14,801 grains per cubic meter of air.  Oh, I feel so sorry for people who suffer with seasonal allergies, especially when pollen is reaching unprecedented levels.

I discover these unfamiliar, to me, slender flower-like strands on our back deck just the other day.  What can they possibly be?  Danny uses the Google Lens on his phone and voila!  It turns out these are the nascent flowers from our sugar maple growing right beside our house.  But why have we never seen these before?  More research reveals that sugar maples don't reach seed bearing age until they are between thirty and forty years old.  And since Danny estimates that he planted our maple a little over 30 years ago, it makes all the sense in the world.

Using his zoom lens on his camera Danny captures some amazing photos:

Our mature sugar maple is doing a new thing, and now it springs forth in a way that both delights and fascinates us.  Isn't that just how God works at times?  When we least expect anything about our old, familiar shade tree to do anything else but leaf out for the summer and to grow taller each season, God shows us that there is so much more that He does behind the scenes that we, in our limited knowledge, cannot even begin to fathom.

When the ways before us are seemingly choked with obstacles and debris, and our souls feel parched and sere, the Lord will be there always to make straight our paths and refresh us with His Living Water, the well that will never run dry.

Amen!