It is Good Friday

 

When I was a child, I could never understand how this day could be called Good Friday. I would sit in the church and look at the crucified Christ and wonder how His death could be Good. I understand now, from the theological point of view, that it is Good because Jesus' death allows us to come back to a unity with God that our sin had destroyed. Yet there are times when that Friday so long ago just doesn't seem good.

 Today, I was in bed recovering from a mild case of the flu and I found Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth on YouTube. When I first became a believer at Boston University, with the help of my then roommate Jim Vivian, we wanted to watch Jesus of Nazareth on TV. But neither of us had a TV so we went throughout the dorm looking for one. When we asked one guy if we could borrow his set, he asked what game was on. When we told him, "Jesus of Nazareth, you want to watch?", he looked at us strangely and said to just take the TV.

I remember watching the series and being in awe of what was happening. As I watched the final segments today, I cried a bit and felt a love in my heart for the Lord that sometimes gets covered up in the day-to-day.

Some of those tears were helped by missing Deb a lot this week and some were from the fever. But most were from a place that needed to be touched by God's Love.

Sergei, Pasha and Igor

We all need that touch. This past week, I got to spend time with Sergei, Pasha and Igor at the rehab house in Zolotonosha. A group of guys from New Hampshire is interested in coming over and repairing the second floor of the house as it is falling in (not a good thing) so I needed to get some photos. As I was there, I saw how Igor is like a child in many ways, especially when he is around Sergei. Igor never knew his parents and grew up in an orphanage. After he turned 18, he lived on the streets and at places all over Ukraine, never for more than a month.

A couple of years ago, Igor found his mother and was so excited that he bought her roses, candy and other gifts and went to her door. When she opened the door, Igor saw his own face before him and she saw hers. Yet in an act of brutality that is hard to understand, his mother told Igor that she didn't want to see him and started to shut the door. Devastated, he threw the gifts at her and ran away.

Until recently, Igor has kept running. But he is learning about a Father who never shuts the door to His children. He is also finding that there is a love that allows others, like Sergei, to love him more than he has ever been loved before.

Tony Campolo used to say,"It's Friday, but Sunday's comin'." Igor's and many others' lives are full of Fridays, but thank God we have a love that comes from a special Sunday so long ago.

Христос Воскрес! Christ is Risen! Happy Easter.