A Reflection: Good Friday?

Each year at this time, someone young or old will typically ask me… Why do they call this GOOD FRIDAY?

As a kid, who use to sit through three hours of mass on this day, it never felt that good to me either. Back then, and for long after, I missed the point. As I have gotten older, I have come to realize how GOOD this day is for my soul and the souls of others. Recently, when I explained it to my youngest kid, I said simply, “It’s GOOD because our GOOD and loving God made a way for our sins to be forgiven. And we all need that.”

Beneath this simple answer rests a mysterious truth that takes faith to believe and speaks to how GOOD this Friday is for our souls.

As we know, our souls are so easily weighed down by guilt and destroyed by shame. Our missteps from the past seem to leave traces like muddy track marks on our souls. Left to harden, they become like a pathway that forms into a narrative that leads us away from the best that God has for our lives (Psalm 32:8). Instead, this pathway leads to embarrassment, embarrassment leads to shame, shame leads to an identity crisis, an identity crisis leads to hiding, hiding leads to posing and posing leads us back to shame.

But since to sin is human, how GOOD and gracious is our God that He provided a way out at the ninth hour some 2000+ years ago on GOOD Friday. Like the thick veil torn in the temple at that hour, so is the shame shattered in our souls, if we put belief in the One, known as Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). This grace was so amazing He was willing to die for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8) - no prerequisites, all works aside. Just like the thief on the cross next to Him, we are guilty, our souls burdened, but forgiven if we are willing to believe like that thief. And regardless, of the present and future, He cleanses our souls white as snow (Isaiah 1:18) and separates our sins from us, as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).

O how I love how GOOD it feels when the dis-ease in my soul is replaced with His Shalom (peace), as I confess the reality of my need to Him (1John 1:9). May you understand and receive more and more of the GOODness of this Friday.