Good Friday

I remember as a child thinking... are these folks nuts? Good Friday? Hey... I don't know much, but I've seen the movies. There are a lot of adjectives to use for this day, but GOOD?

As a child, my focus was all on the corporal, the material.... THIS world... Death. I remember thinking that I didn't even know why this all happened, but the one thing I was sure of was that it wasn't good that people hurt and killed Jesus.

As an adult, I can see things from a different perspective. I understand that it's not about what we did to Jesus, but about what HE did for us. As an adult, I can understand more fully that while Easter Sunday... The Resurrection, is the fullfillment of all of Jesus' promises, and the "punctuation mark" on the Great mystery of salvation, it is the Crucifixion which saves us. The gates of heaven were opened to us through Christ's suffering and death.

That is what makes it Good.

It was a Good Friday 23 years ago that began our conversion journey back to living the fullness of our faith. We were living in the Philippines. We woke up that morning feeling like we were in a twilight zone. Silence. Where were the people? The jeepnies? The animals? The market wagons? Every shop was closed. Even the bars were closed!

Now, you need to understand... this was a city built outside the gate of a Naval Base. This was a place where the purpose was to make money from the sailors who were seeking entertainment and recreation. Every building on the main strip had a bar of some kind. The country and western bar, the disco bar, the karoke bar, the rock-n-roll bar, the polynesian bar... it was endless. There were also shops, restaurants, money exchange booths, beggars, thieves, and prostitutes in every direction.

This was an impoverished people on the constant verge of martial law. A desperate people trying to survive. Most were hard working family people doing whatever job they could to send money back to their families who lived in more rural areas.

We were amazed when on Christmas day, the only difference in the hustle and bustle was that there was garland hanging in the bars. It felt like any other day.

But Good Friday... Everything stopped. Everything.

Mike and I just sat on our patio reflecting how different this was from back home in America. In America, the focus is always on the celebration. It took a deployment half way around the world for us to learn a deep reverence for Christ's sacrifice. That was the first time in our lives we stopped to truly meditate on what Jesus had done for us... and why. We became deeply aware of our own sins and the need to change our lives.

Of course, upon returning home, we discovered that there were many who already knew what we had learned and that it was our own lack of practicing our faith that had kept us from "seeing". But we also became deeply aware that our culture does not embrace sacrifice, does not understand self-giving love, and that it would indeed be a challenge to live "in" this world, but not be "of" it.

That Good Friday was the beginning of a journey with many twists and turns. The first of many conversion moments.

But we will always be thankful that God sent us away to bring us home...

Blessings... *Linda*