THE PAIN OF GOOD FRIDAY

It’s Good Friday, but Easter is just around the corner. It's possible that thinking like this allows to skip easily past Good Friday, and that is to our detriment. For Jesus' disciples, his mother and those who pinned their hopes on him the Friday he was executed was a day of darkness and pain - they did not think about resurrection.

I can’t imagine how long that night must have felt. Little sleep. Images of Jesus, bloodied, beaten and hanging on a cross in their minds. That pit in the stomach after losing a loved one.

For them, Easter was not around the corner - hope was a distant reality. When it comes to Good Friday, we don’t like to dwell too long on the day evil, violence and the power of darkness won. We are a culture of denial. We don’t like to admit to pain, struggle or sorrow. But Good Friday teaches us we can (and should) engage even our greatest darkness.

With this in mind, there are a few things we can learn from this day.

You will experience pain in this life. It’s been said the only thing we can be certain of is death and taxes. I’d add pain to that list. (Yes, I recognize both death and taxes are painful). We often seem surprised when we are hurt, but we need not be. Pain is part of life, and if you have not experience it yet – I have some bad news: You will.

We should not move on too quickly from our wounds. We cannot forget the friends, family and followers of Jesus sat with his death all day Friday and all day Saturday. When we are wounded we often want to move on quickly, and pretend like everything is okay. We can do better. Pain is master teacher – teaching us about ourselves, God, our world – and we must stay long enough with it to learn what it wishes to teach us.

If it hurts; it hurts. We often look at others and say, “I have nothing to complain about, think about how bad it is for him …” What we forget is that pain was never meant to be compared. If we have been wounded we need to deal with it. In my life, most of my pain comes in small doses. In the times I ignore it, all those small doses turn into something bigger – then there is a far bigger problem.

Sometimes evil prevails. It’s not a popular idea, but it’s true. There will be times in our life when we are knocked down, beaten up and betrayed and it seems that those that did it will get away with it. This is one of the most painful aspects of life. And it was how the disciples of Jesus must have felt the day Jesus died.

My hope is that today and tomorrow, we will have the courage to enter the darkness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday together. May we stand with Jesus at the cross, and remember him who bore our suffering, was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our sin.