The best of all Good days

This is the best of all good days.

It's Good Friday.  The day when Christians all over the world remember the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps this doesn't seem like it should be a good day.  It certainly wouldn't have seemed good for the followers of Jesus.  Their Lord, the one they believed to be the Messiah, had been betrayed, arrested, tortured, mocked, and condemned to death.  Finally he was nailed to a cross.

And he died.  He really, truly died.

It seemed as if the Messiah wasn't who everyone thought he had been.  "If you are the Son of God," the soldiers and religious leaders taunted, "come down from there!"

I'm sure his mother, his disciples, those who loved and followed him, wondered why he didn't come down from the cross.

Why he endured unimaginable suffering.  Why he responded to their angry jeers with sad silence.

They couldn't know, then, the magnitude of what he was doing.  The Messiah, the Savior, suffered in near-silence, speaking only to utter words of forgiveness, words to fulfill prophecies made about him hundreds of years before... with the weight of the world's sin on his sinless shoulders.

He suffered so that we would not have to.  He took on himself what we deserve and endured separation from God himself so that we would never experience such grief, such guilt.

That's why today is called Good...

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Because we know that on another Friday, so long ago, Jesus paid the price for our sins.  He took our guilt and punishment on himself so we would know his forgiveness.  So that we would not die eternally, but would instead spend eternity with him in heaven.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul,

What wondrous love is this, O my soul?

What wondrous love is this,

That caused the Lord of bliss

To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,

To bear the dreadful curse for my soul?