Six Hours One Friday

[Obviously my Good Friday post is a little late...]
Six Hours. That's the number of hours I worked on Friday. In that period of time I managed to let some kids into college, talk to at least a dozen parents on the phone, answer some emails, catch up on the status of the ship captain out in the Indian Ocean, and properly hydrate for the 90 minute Zumbathon that was to take place later that afternoon at the gym.

Six Hours. That's the number of hours that Jesus spent on the cross. Hum. I deliberately used "spent" instead of "hung" in my previous sentence because initially I thought that it sounded too harsh for the blogosphere. But you know, it was harsh. And it was real.

It's so easy to become somewhat detached from the whole thing. It was years ago. On another continent. In another culture. And it's something that we now just read about in a big book with flimsy pages. Yet this year I've really been thinking about that specific day in which Jesus gave his own life so that I would one day live forever. He had a mama who loved and raised him. And friends who could carry on a conversation with him in the same manner that you and I converse with our friends. On the day that he died, they had to go through the pain of losing him. Just like you and I grieve when we lose someone we love. And you know, it's really easy for me to think "but look at how it turned out...it's what was supposed to happen...surely, they were ok with it...certainly, they didn't feel the pain like we feel pain when tragedy strikes." But do you think that it was really all that "good" for them on that Friday? I don't. On that 3rd day though...that's when things started to get a little better even then some of his disciples still doubted at first. Which leads me to wonder when Good Friday became good.

I think that we all have similar experiences. Something terrible happens. It is not good. We cannot see how it will ever be good. But then in time, it is and we begin to see it. And maybe we even gain a little bit of understanding and through that we are comforted. I love the story of Easter. I love that the human side of Jesus emerges in this story because for me it's really easy to think of him as some invincible being who never struggled with anything. But when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, he didn't want to die. Can you much blame him? He had done nothing wrong. Yet he surrendered to God's will. And though he suffered, he did it for the good that was to come from it. And you know what...It was good. It is good. It will be good.