It’s Friday, Don’t Get Stuck!

When I was a teenager I was greatly affected by a sermon that I heard over and over again on cassette tape titled, “It’s Friday, Sunday’s Comin’!” The preacher was Rev. Anthony Compollo and the sermon is exciting and motivating to us as Christ followers exhorting us to live in the power of the resurrected Christ and rejoice in the fact that we know the rest of the story and can move beyond the dark days of the past.

Recently though I have realized what Friday (Good Friday) may have been like for those who were closest to Jesus as the first Friday unfolded. My imagination has been gripped by the intense sense of loss and hopelessness that must have engulfed those close to Him as they saw from afar the stone being sealed over the mouth of the tomb as the did their best to fade into the shadows and find a place to get away from the crowd. Oh, the grief! oh, the disappointment! Oh, the lost feeling that seemed to settle upon them! Hope that was once a fire, now dead ashes at their feet.

It is easy for us to kind of get lost in this and misuse our remembrance time as Christians on Good Friday. In the past I have thought that this was the implied purpose of the observance of the day, but as I sit and write this I realize that there is a different viewpoint for me to consider. You see, I have moved beyond Friday and have experienced the Resurrected Savior. Life is new every morning and I will not reach back into my past and allow the empty, hopeless life to be a memory I spend any time on. There is something that Good Friday can do for me though and that is to deepen the reality that there are those around me who are experiencing the despair and hopelessness experienced by Jesus’ friends. Some know about the Savior, others do not. Good Friday is a good day to be reminded of the lost and hurting around us and gain a new enthusiasm to reach out to them and help them get to Resurrection Day because they are stuck.

Don’t get stuck on Friday, because Sunday is coming and we need to bring all we can with us.

His Kid, Your Brother

Ken