Friday.... a day we set aside to remember.... because we forget.
We forget that Friday, a day we call Good Friday, wasn't really a "good" day. I would rather think of it as "dark" Friday. Because that is really the only way to describe it.
The very people He came to save rejected Him.
The men He spent so much time with abandoned Him, and one even went as far as to betray Him.
He was dragged to court in the dead of night and wrongly accused.
The morning of that dark Friday He stood before a crowd.... a crowd made up of people who at that very moment were in the midst of one their most sacred religious festivals. Passover, a period of 7 days in which the Jews were supposed to remember where they came from, and to dwell in the hope that was to come. A time to remember slavery... to remember living in darkness and to remember being brought out of the darkness. A time to remember that one day their Messiah would come to save them from eternal darkness.
And yet there He was, standing right in front of their very eyes and yet they forgot.....
So He stood there, looking into the crowd, into the very eyes which He came to set free. His ears took in their hate filled cries, yet He never looked back. No matter what they said.... no matter what they did He still loved them..... He still wanted to offer them grace... saving grace.
It only got worse.... He was dragged off and beaten, like a lamb led to be slaughtered. His body was torn and His blood ran. He suffered through the humiliation, and made the lonely walk to the top of the hill where He would breathe His last. Then men picked up hammers and began to nail His hands, the very hands that created them, to a tree.
Then the dreadful moment came upon Him.... that moment when the sins of the world... my sins... your sins..... where laid on His back. The Father had to turn His face from the Son. Forsaken by the Father, the ultimate darkness. And for a brief moment it appeared that evil had won.
Darkness......
The day, it was dark, but oh how Holy it was. And as I think on that dark Friday that quote fills my thoughts and yes, I see it. The words slowly begin to make sense. It was dark that day..... the darkest this world has ever experienced. But oh how Holy it was.... maybe even the Holiest of days.... because the Son, the Lamb of God had finally done what He had came to do.... be the perfect sacrifice.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.John 1:10-14
