Good Friday… It is a day that I reflect on the journey and sacrifice Christ made some 2000 years ago for me. It is not the only day that I look at the cost of the cross, but it is a day that I put myself at the foot of the cross.  It isn’t easy to look at the ugliness of that day.  Actually I can barely fathom it.  I think it is human nature to avoid discomfort of any kind, but on Good Friday I force myself to go there and see it.  I try to imagine the dust on the road, I try to hear the crowd jeering at him, I force myself to look at his torn skin and the blood.  I feel my heart being torn from me as I imagine that must have been how his mother felt as she watched helplessly as her child was nailed to the cross.

It is awful isn’t it?  

Why is it GOOD Friday? I have read several takes on that over the years. Good Friday is called Mourning Friday, Great Friday, Black Friday in different countries. Some people think that it use to be God’s Friday and became Good Friday over time. Regardless of its origins is there Good in Good Friday? 

I think so, it is the day that we remember Jesus’ sacrifice for us, when He died for our sins so that we could have the free gift of eternal life. Yes, Friday is only one part of that miraculous gift, but it is the hard and ugly and difficult part of the glorious gift. It is much easier to look upon the empty tomb than to look at the pain on the cross.

The great hope and truth is that because of what he did over 2000 years ago on that cross we can live with Him in heaven. There is pain and suffering in this world, but we have the hope of what is to come. So we remember, the good and perfect lamb that was slain for us on Good Friday; we remember the good gift of eternal life that is possible because of his sacrifice.

I would like to suggest that we take time to look at all the good that is in our own lives. I would like to go further than that, and encourage us to look around us at whom we can help, who can we do a little good for on this Good Friday.

Italics are from a post I wrote in 2009

Photo credit lamazone