It's Friday but...

To use a phrase like ‘bittersweet’ to describe the events we reflect on today sounds like a huge understatement. Insulting even.

But that’s the entire point. What word or phrase COULD indeed be used to describe ‘Good Friday’?

A Friday which, for the disciples who stuck around to watch their teacher, friend and SAVIOUR hang from a cross like a common criminal would have been utterly devastating.

I pondered a while yesterday – on why we call it ‘good’ and naturally came to the obvious conclusion – we know what happens next.

Today is Friday. But Sunday’s coming.

But whenever Good Friday comes around, I can’t help but think about the disciples who watched on helplessly as everything they knew and trusted quite literally fell apart in front of their very eyes.

‘But they knew the outcome too’, we might argue.

And yet, how many times have WE been promised something from God, only to doubt, second-guess and disappointingly live up to our ‘human-ness’, stopping or quitting over believing Him at His word?

What was promised no longer felt permanent – as though all had been for nothing.

Of course the truth is anything but ‘nothing’.

The truth is what saved us, the truth is what continues to save us and the truth is GOOD.

Good for me and good for you. Literally.

Without Him, we’re nothing. And yet so often, we choose actions which suggest that Jesus taking on our sins and dying in our place that we might live, is what’s considered nothing.

And how ridiculous does that sound?

Today as we take some time to reflect during Good Friday, may we remember the ULTIMATE good – the Saviour for sinners and the healer to the broken. The same God who saw it fit to save a wretch like me.

Today may mark a time to be reflective, but Jesus’ death and indeed LIFE, didn’t leave us open to the fact that reflection should be our permanent state. - Our lives are to be lived TODAY. The calling on our lives is to be pursued, the message and truth we have to share, to be spread.

Today is Friday. But Sunday’s coming.

So today as we rest, reflect and remember may we remind ourselves of just how much GOODNESS there is to come.

We might, in some ways, believe there to be nothing good about ‘Good Friday’, but this day actually just marked what had only just begun. ✝️