I love Good Friday. Always have.
Given to a melancholic personality type I can get somber pretty fast, especially on a day like today.
Yet, this weekend means nothing to millions. Is it just another weekend?
I work for a Christian university. Today is a holiday as we recognize the death of Christ. Some businesses will close for the day, or some for the afternoon. I look for that.
Then tomorrow, Saturday, millions if not billions will go about their day as if nothing had happened to them, for them or in them.
Then Sunday, Easter, Resurrection Day, people will wake up as they did the previous Sunday. The Masters will go on as if it is more important than any other event on the planet. Baseball will continue. Retail will continue to function. At least NASCAR has the decency to halt racing for that day.
Me? I have been exposed to the Easter celebration all my life. And have been a christian for some 45 years now. (That sounds weird and sounds like a long time) And of all the days where we celebrate the events leading up to Sunday, the one where I built my foundation in Christianity is this day, Good Friday.
I can more easily believe that a man can rise from the dead under God’s power than I can that the same man would willingly be brutually tortured and murdered for me. The sacrifice of that I have yet to understand. Possibly, I never will.
And I often contemplate the “why” of all of this and come up short of a true understanding.
Men and women can throw up and throw out their bombastic, shameless and arrogant streams of thought that they have tricked themselves into thinking that they now understand the finality of God and His purpose in sending Christ to earth, to die. And they think they can grasp this? They think they can deliver a relevant answer to the question, “what manner of man would die for another with nothing to be gained in return?”
They will lead you to believe they fully comprehend this type of sacrifice. They don’t. Who can?
The closest we can come as humanity to understand this is to understand God, Christ and the sacrifice we celebrate on this weekend is to humbly approach it in the following manner. Not trying to understand it by reason or by some false revelation, but rather to accept this type of love and sacrifice as the tax collector did in Luke 18:13. This is the only way I know how to approach this type of gift.
“But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!'”
I can relate to and understand that approach.
Join me. It’s Good Friday.
JHH
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