Growing up Baptist I only had the faintest idea of Good Friday. I knew that it was the day Jesus died, I knew that Catholics went to Mass (although there were few of them around) and I knew that Easter was coming Sunday and that was the main event. If there was a service at my church I don’t remember anyone ever talking about it. It’s not that my family or my church looked on the day lightly, I just think that we were way more focused on the resurrection on Sunday. I think we all took Jesus’ death seriously, I just don’t remember being focused on it.
My world is a little different on this Good Friday. I woke this morning and my first thoughts (besides getting the dog off me) were thankfulness to my Savior. Before I went to bed last night I read Luke’s account of the holy week, this morning I read Matthew’s and I will finish the other two over the weekend. My church doesn’t have a service today, but I took the afternoon off to pause and reflect on today’s meaning. My awareness of my own sin is much sharper than it is on a normal day, and I am quick to thank Christ for his mercies. I am not one for high church ceremony or ritual, but a simple day of reflection is important to me, it’s how I mark this day. The importance for this day, a day of remembering the depth of our depravity and the lengths to which Christ went to show us grace, is only eclipsed by one other. The day He rose from the grave and defeated death.
It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!” And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts.
Luke 23:44-48
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:1-2
Tags: cross, easter, good-friday, Jesus
