God's Deathblow

‘Love and righteousness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” Psalm 85:10

This morning as I sit here in the dark with the lit computer screen, I stare at my blank document. How can I write on the subject of Good Friday when nothing about the final moments of Jesus or anyone’s life is good? I have two people on my mind this morning as I consider ‘Good Friday.’ Tomorrow is my sister Beth’s birthday and we would have been celebrating her 54th year. My mind drifts back to that last Friday in 2009 when I would last see her on this earth. She laid there disengaged with this world, but I know fully engaged in her new home to be. I sat next to her alone for a while and then when my parents came in, I said my final goodbyes to her and left the room. I think I knew in my heart as I turned the corner to leave the Hospice House that the next time I would see her would be in Heaven. There was nothing good about that Friday and is still difficult to consider that day. But then as I was driving home with tears streaming down my face it became clear that something ‘good’ was getting ready to happen…something beautiful … something eternal…something destined. She was getting ready to experience why we call today ‘Good Friday’ which brings me to the second person Who is on my mind today…Jesus…sweet Jesus…sinless and sacrificial Jesus.

Because God is love and provided a way to atone for our sins our departed loved ones are declared worthy and welcome into Heaven. Because Jesus was faithful and obedient all the way to the cross, we will see their precious faces again. And because Psalm 119:16 says ‘all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be’ I have the assurance that death is not some random act but the perfectly orchestrated vessel for a loving Father to be reunited with His children. It's the promise that they won and death lost. So, as I will skip the suffering that Beth experienced that time leading up to her passage I will skip over the documented suffering of Jesus. To get through today we must trust that the events that led up to Jesus committing His spirit to God were destined and necessary for the Christian’s passage into eternity.

The ‘goodness’ of that Friday is where righteousness and peace met up and kissed each other. ‘It is where God’s demands, his righteousness, coincided with His mercy. We receive divine forgiveness, mercy, and peace because Jesus willingly took our divine punishment...Good Friday marks the day when wrath and mercy met at the cross. Paradoxically, the day that seemed to be the greatest triumph of evil was actually the deathblow in God’s glorious good plan to redeem the world from bondage.’ Christianity Today website, Father, I Commit My Spirit into Your Hands.

Because it was 'finished' on Good Friday it will be GREAT on Resurrection Sunday!