Sunday's Coming.... But First, Friday

Today's most popular sentiment is "Sunday's Coming!" and oh how grateful I am that it was, it did, and it still is. I feel like I'm living in my own little "Sunday's coming!" state right now and it's both a challenging and a glorious place to be.

However, I have always felt like we skip past so much of the whole story of Easter in our eagerness to get to Sunday.  Palm Sunday was a time of huge celebration and we are ready to get to the next celebration, the empty tomb. I'll be honest, I have been guilty of glossing over the Last Supper but after last Sunday's illustrated sermon, I love the Last Supper. I sat there on Sunday morning and watched the disciples all coming in from different sides and places, all gathering down in front of the table, slapping each other on the back, laughing, catching up. I realized how often I forget that the "characters" on the pages of the Bible weren't characters. They were men and women, 3-dimensional, who laughed and cried and hurt and loved.

To be honest, Gethsemane has always been the part of the story that captured me the most (and my deepest and probably ONLY regret from my trips to Israel is that I never made it down to Gethsemane). The sacredness of that night, the velvety darkness of the garden, the soul-wrenching pleas for His Father to intervene... then the apathy of friends, the sound of soldiers' feet, the clash of swords, the heaviness of captivity. Gethsemane was the precursor for everything to come and the depth of His love for us.

The other day that gets neglected in the whole story is Saturday. In fact, in 2013, I wrote this post about what Saturday means to me. Saturday had to have been the hardest day for His followers.

But today, Good Friday..... I think my earliest thoughts of the entire Easter story were shaped by our church Easter cantatas and dramas with such graphic and almost violent depiction and attention to detail of the Crucifixion. And no matter how graphic and violent those scenes felt, the knowledge that they DIDN'T EVEN COMPARE... I have always cherished Good Friday. It may sound weird or even morbid, but I have always made it a point to let myself sink into the darkness of this day, the terrible pain, the betrayals, the isolation. Because without the horror of Good Friday, Sunday was just another Lazarus. Jesus wasn't the only person in history to be resurrected, but He was the only one who died to cancel the sins of the world first.