From my weekly article at Worldmag.com:
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| photo credit: Christopher JL via photopin cc |
Today is Good Friday. We call it “good” because we know how the story ends—it is the doorstep to the salvation encountered on Easter Sunday. But Good Friday was a bad day, a horrid day. Good Friday was the worst day in history.
As followers of Jesus we must not overlook His story, the full story. To skip to the end is to rob the story of its power and its main character of glory. Thinking of Friday only as good ignores the narrative, the true history. There was a road traveled by a real man—the God-man—and we must acknowledge and dwell on His full gory story.
Easter depicts the stunning brightness of miraculous life against the pitch-blackness of death, the death that happened on that Friday. So to think of Good Friday as a celebration is to dull the brightness of Easter. No, Good Friday is a commemoration, not a celebration. It serves as a precursor to the real celebration.
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The story of salvation is one of multiple acts, and the Good Friday act is the dark before the dawn. It is pure blackness with no hope in sight. The seeming Savior is dead, the only truly good man in history unfairly accused and brutally slain. There is no hope today, not in this act of the story.
The hope comes Sunday. . .
