Good Friday Thoughts and Worship April 11, 2020

Good Friday Thoughts and Worship Today is Good Friday, and, as Christians, it is a day that we observe; we even call it good because, as a result of the death of Jesus, by crucifixion, we have Salvation through Christ by our faith in Him and in His finished work on the cross. Sometimes we even say we “celebrate” the day, and, again, the end result of what Jesus did for us is absolutely celebrational and even sensational. But it’s also rather hard to celebrate the events of the day because it was a dark day, a sad day, a day of despair, of weeping and bewilderment. It was a day when sin seemed to have won. It was a day when evil men with evil intentions seemed to have triumphed. It is a hard day, in many ways, for Christians to observe and to commemorate. It’s hard enough to think through the indignities, the humiliations, the injustices, the impunity that Jesus endured – all with His own voluntary consent! What kind of determined self-squelching of His own power and attributes must have overcome the human part of Jesus – the part that hurt, was insulted, that was revolted, and reviled against, that was beaten and whipped to an unrecognizable form. All those atrocities are hard enough to consider and to try to imagine, but is it not harder, still, to realize, that they – the atrocities – one by one, one after another, and each one heaped on each other, were also caused by me and by you. We are and were the reason He was there. We are and were the reason He chose not to retaliate, to exert the power at His disposal and at His finger tips. Every whip lashed against His back,, every thorn jammed upon His head, every blow from every soldier – every long second of agony was suffered expressly for you and for me. Let’s go through this day with reverence and awe, and let’s allow ourselves to be overwhelmed be His great love for us. As the song says, “How can it be . . . . that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me? Amazing love, how can it be, that Thou, my God shouldst die for Me?” REMEMBER… “It’s Friday; Sunday’s a’ comin’.”