Today, Christians worldwide remember Jesus' passion and death in the Good Friday Liturgy. Our Lord's last day will be a dark and terrible one--one that will move us to tears.
In our churches, God's Spirit will draw us into Jesus' suffering and death through the readings, prayers, somber hymnody and music, and silence. We experience for ourselves--in our heads and hearts--Jesus' journey to the depths of human estrangement from God and his consecrating of that hellish nothingness with God's loving, life-giving presence.
In doing so, Jesus reconciles us in our farthest place from God with him. Now, the devil, sin, suffering, and death itself no longer have power over us--not after Jesus' passion and death. And not after the third day and his resurrection from the grave.
Therefore,Good Friday is good, because God, in Jesus, makes it good with his identification with us, even at our worst and in the worst of our circumstances.
Good Friday reminds us of how great God's love for us is in Jesus Christ, that the Son of God would suffer and die for us to save us from an eternity without the loving companionship of God.
Today in prayer, I will thank Jesus for all he did for me. And I will do something else, inspired by a friend's email to me: I will do something for Jesus in gratitude for what he did for me on the cross. I will appreciate his grace and will express his grace in action.
May God bless this Friday with his goodness.
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