Good Friday

I wonder if any of us, after the passing of time, will ever look back on the worst day of our entire lives and call it “Good.” Certainly as the disciples were going through the crushing grief, disappointment, fear and agony of that Bad Friday, they would have had no sane conception that it would ever be called “Good.”

Christians call it “Good” because the criminal death of Christ took place as a substitutionary death. The wrath of God I justly deserve for being a rebel against my Holy Creator fell on Christ instead of me. If you’re on death row, and fully expecting to suffer the just wrath of the state, and suddenly they let you off, and someone takes your place, you too may eventually call that day “Good.”

We are so finite, so small. Sometimes only the passage of time will give enough perspective to allow us to begin to see how God was using this pain, this disappointment, this tragedy for anything that could remotely be called “Good.” Indeed, the purpose for many of our hurts may never be explained on this side of glory. However, one of the great hopes of the Saints is that ultimate vindication is coming.

Today, twenty-seven years ago, my mother was in the worst pain she had ever experienced in her entire life. It was not a “good” day. Yet, on the anniversary of that day, every subsequent year, she celebrates and reminisces with fondness the day she became a mother. The joy of the end eclipsed the pain of the beginning.

The Resurrection makes Bad Friday “Good.” Our hope in this present pain is that the end of the story will somehow redeem today.