Friday, April 18, 2014

Good...No, INCREDIBLE, Friday

Friday started on Thursday. Jesus showed his disciples the depth of his love by humbly serving their distracted, self-centered souls, giving them strength for the future they didn't even know they would need. He forgave his betrayer and their cowardice before it even happened, and then went to the Garden to agonize with his Father. After tears and pain beyond my power to comprehend, he surrendered everything. "Not my will, Yours be done", and then walked knowingly, willingly into
the hands of his captors. Handed himself over while ten thousand powerful warrior angels were restrained from wreaking fury on these insolent and arrogant humans--humans for whom he was going to the cross to pay a sin debt so large they could never imagine, let alone relieve.

Through the night he was mocked, abused, beaten, skin ripped and torn, stripped and humiliated. He never lost his composure, never traded love for hate, never backed away from his commitment to absorb the wrath of a holy God against sin for the very people who were sinning against him at the moment.

Daybreak slowly crept over the horizon, and with it the mock trials ended with, "Crucify him!"
"Justice" would be served for the heinous crimes of loving, healing, restoring, pointing the path to wholeness. Friday's first order of business was to find a cross for the criminal, lay it on his back, and begin the trek to Golgotha, the skull-shaped craggy hill outside Jerusalem.

Slowly, tortuously the Messiah carried my cross...your cross...our cross. The Via Dolorosa was packed on this Friday, people in Jerusalem for the Passover getting an unexpected carnival show--a man on his way to public death. He stumbled, fell, bled his way to the pinnacle where around 9 a.m. on that incredible Friday, Jesus Christ spread his arms on the cross beam, lowered his feet to the upright bar, and was nailed to the cross.

That incredible Friday, the day we call Good Friday, he was separated from his Father, bearing the weight of my sin, and died. That Good Friday, that INCREDIBLE Friday, is the reason that anything truly good has ever happened to me.

No comments: