Good Friday

It is bad enough to watch someone we love suffer. It is unendurable to think of someone we love suffering because of what we have done. Jesus was broken, not only by Death, but also by the consequences of Sin, as he took our place on the Cross on the first Good Friday. If you or I were God, we would have arranged for somebody else to pay that price, someone who we figured was deserving of condemnation. God arranged for his own self to pay the price; Jesus, the one person who did not deserve condemnation, stood forward to take the weight of sin upon himself, instead of us.

May each one of us have courage to put ourselves in the place of the disciples. Imagine their situation. If we can do so, we will understand and celebrate Easter as never before. Capture this moment at 3:00 this afternoon. That is the beginning of the space between Good Friday and Easter. Jesus is dead. All is black and despair. Can you feel the magnitude of what he has done? Christ has descended into hell for us. There is no human hope left. Nothing we can do will bring him back. All the spring flowers and sunshine and Easter eggs and greeting cards and positive thinking in the world will not bring him back. We are left in the wreckage, in the darkness, in the silence. There is nothing- nothing- that can rebuild this wreckage, nothing can lighten this darkness, nothing can break this silence-except an act of God!