Good Friday

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to thee, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer, and Lord, give us here today, eyes to see and ears to hear so we can learn your word together as a family. We offer you all the praise, honor, and Glory for it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Good afternoon, my fellow encouragers! Good Friday is Good News, especially if we are facing or have experienced some of the pain and anguish of Good Friday ourselves. God knows and God cares—God has been there Himself, in Jesus.

As you know, Jane and I have great-grandchildren. Teaching them how to pray can be pretty fulfilling, but funny sometimes. I remember a story about a 3-year-old boy learning the Lord’s Prayer. Some of you may have heard this story too. It seems that the little boy was convinced that God’s first name was Harold, and that God spent most of his time painting and drawing because he began the Lord’s Prayer like this: “Our Father, who does ‘Art’ in heaven, Harold be thy name!”

Well, sometimes, what can seem like a trivial joke, or even to some an insult to the prayer that Jesus taught, can be a lesson for us as his disciples today.

While God is not like any artist I have encountered, He is (in a sense) the heavenly artist – the designer and the creator of all things. Right at the start of the Bible, Moses records this about God in Genesis 1:31, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

The Word of God is clear, and while His name is not ‘Harold’, the Bible does give a name to the designer, the Creator. His name is Yahweh.

When God’s people were slaves in Egypt, God saw their misery. Exodus 3:7 says, “And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;”

When God sent Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, He told Moses that when they ask who sent you, say, “Yahweh, the God of your Fathers …has sent me to you. This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3:15)

Now that is good news! God is not some unseen, unknown entity. God has a name. God can be known and wants to be in a relationship with us.

Jesus is the supreme revelation and visible image of the invisible God. St. Paul tells us in Colossians 1:15, “He is the exact living image [the essential manifestation] of the unseen God [the visible representation of the invisible], the firstborn [the preeminent one, the sovereign, and the originator] of all creation.”

St. Paul continues a few verses later, “For it pleased the Father for all the fullness [of deity—the sum total of His essence, all His perfection, powers, and attributes] to dwell [permanently] in Him (the Son), and through [the intervention of] the Son to reconcile all things to Himself, making peace [with believers] through the blood of His cross; through Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” (Colossians 1:19-20)

If you want to know what God is like and how God reacts to various situations, get to know Jesus, for the sum total of God’s essence is in Him. He was flogged. He was mocked. He was struck in the face, and still today, to my amazement, people continue to do that to His name.

On the cross, Jesus died a cruel human death, and because the fullness of God dwelt in Jesus, as the scripture tells us, that means that God has experienced death also.

When we face times of despair, pain, and anguish, bereavement, or even death, we have a friend in Jesus who has been there himself. He sympathizes with us in all of our weaknesses.

The phrase ‘been there, done that, read the book, seen the film, or bought the tee-shirt’ comes to mind. Whatever bad stuff you may be facing right now or will face in the future, God knows about it. Even if He seems silent, He will bring you through it.

Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”; but that is only the first line of a Psalm. Later, the Psalmist writes, “You who fear the Lord praise him! For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help” (Psalm 22:23-24).

When Astronauts re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere from space, they experience a period of radio blackout. So, if you are facing a spiritual radio blackout, remember, Sunday’s coming! Hallelujah!