Good Friday

Spring breeze silks up the brick-cobbled steps into this coffeeshop where all the baristas' first names come out fast through smiling teeth, and it takes at least 10 minutes of the closing routine to pressure my departure. 


It's Good Friday, and I'm returning to a friendly book and familiar passage: 

"Christianity fails when in my haste and selfishness I fixate on a life of Easter Sundays, all victorious and pastel-clad, and I forget that the place where I was first afforded space in the embrace of God was on Good Friday at the foot of the Cross. Good Friday is where I return over and over, filthy and foolish and burdened by my failures, and where I see how God loves me anyway. Not in a way that ignores my dirt, but in a way that seems to almost value the dirt, because the dirt is what brings me to him. Good Friday is where I see the difference between myself and my sin. I think I would feel better if I spent more time lingering in Friday. And I bet my image of God would change a lot too." 

- Pete Gaul, Learning My Name

For a long time, I've pondered the concept of active and passive decisions. And the first time I encountered the above passage, the ductile bridge between the cross and grace stretched visible. Whether attention lingers, acklowledges, or poisonously distracts, the truth holds. Good Friday is good not because of who we are, but because of who Jesus is. 

We cannot live the Christian life with our actions adhering like flypaper to existentialism. 

For I have no obedience to holiness in myself. To beat my head against that wall paints a crimson sketch of self-righteous masochism. Nothing of value. 

So I'm sitting here for the thousandth time frustrated, with a brick wall behind me chipped with the gritty qualities of crumbles, missing mortar, and bullet holes. 

But I'm answering the invitation to look at Jesus today, and that will make all the difference. 

"Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end... If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me." 

- John 13:1, 8b (NASB)