Good Friday

On my walk this week I was amazed, yet again, as I saw life springing up all around me. The cycle of death and life - a profound mystery.

Less than a week before Jesus was arrested He predicted His death in this way, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds... “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” John 12: 23 -28

No one truly understood what He was talking about until after the week was over. That's when they said, "Didn't He say ...?" 

Today we have the whole scene behind us. We don't need to grieve, as did His loved ones when they laid Him in the grave, because we know that His death led to life. He arose, the Victor over death. The mystery is this, that through His death we can have life. Life abundant and forever.  Hallelujah, What a Savior! 

I was reminded this week of a poem written by James Allan Francis, One Solitary Life. The following verses sum up the idea in the poem in the best way. 

⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Philippians 2: 5-11