\tWhen Moses was driven from Egypt, afraid for his life and with a warrant out for his arrest, he was not having his best day. Raised to be a prince in Egypt, his murder of the Egyptian had been precipitated by his desire to see justice for his people. At that moment, his plans were in a shambles. Instead, he found himself marrying a foreign woman and settling down to a life of tending sheep on the back side of nowhere. Forty years would pass before anything changed for him. During those long decades, he doubtless thought that all his dreams had died.<\/p>\n
\tOn the Friday that Jesus was executed, had you been able to find any of Jesus\u2019 disciples, and had you asked them, \u201cIs today a good day?\u201d their responses would likely not have been printable. Likewise, Mary, Jesus\u2019 mother, would have been certain that it was, instead, the worst day of her life. All their hopes, all their expectations lay in shattered bits.<\/p>\n
\tFor Jesus, it was not a good day, either. His dying words, addressed to God, were a cry of despair: \u201cWhy have you forsaken me?\u201d (Matthew 27:46)<\/p>\n
\tSo why is the day that the Roman government put Jesus to death by means of one of the most gruesome methods ever devised by human ingenuity referred to as \u201cGood Friday?\u201d<\/p>\n
\tBecause Christians believe that by dying on the cross that day, Jesus reconciled humanity to God. As Paul would later write, \u201cFor God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ\u2019s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation…\u201d (Colossians 1:19-22)<\/p>\n
\tThus, thanks to our wider perspective, the meaning of Jesus\u2019 death transforms what would otherwise be a very bad day into a very good day. It also helps that Jesus did not stay dead. His mother and his friends had to suffer only until Sunday, when Jesus walked out of the tomb. Of course, it took them a bit of time to wrap their heads around that unexpected reversal of fortune.<\/p>\n
\tMoses and Jesus are not the only biblical characters to have bad days, of course. The author of Hebrews writes, \u201cSome faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated\u2014 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.\u201d (Hebrews 11:36-40)<\/p>\n
\tIt is not immediately encouraging to us to contemplate those words in the last sentence: \u201cnone of them received what had been promised.\u201d Instead, they received destitute lives, persecution, and miserable deaths. This passage in Hebrews is not likely to be grabbed by multitudes as their life verse. Very few calendars or wall plaques will be inscribed with those bleak lines. <\/p>\n
\tIn our generally happy lives as twenty-first century inhabitants of the Western world, surrounded by wonders and abundance\u2014even in a recession\u2014that would dazzle most who have struggled across the pages of human history\u2014it can be hard to tolerate the least little difficulty. Instead, we wonder: if God is so good and so powerful, then why do we have problems? If he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, then why can\u2019t he sell one or two to help me with my mortgage this month? If he notices sparrows falling, then why couldn\u2019t he have moved that bit of debris out of my path and spare me having a flat tire? If he talked to Moses face to face, why couldn\u2019t he have emailed me a warning against putting my money in AIG?<\/p>\n
\tBut perhaps our questions are backwards. People rarely ask, when they are blessed by prosperity, by success as the world sees success, by happy relationships, by children who are doing well in school, \u201cWhy me God? Why is life so good? Why am I so blessed? Why do good things happen to good people?\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLikewise, when we see a drug dealer being hauled away by the police in handcuffs, we don\u2019t moan and blame God, wondering, \u201cwhy is that poor young man suffering so much?\u201d<\/p>\n
\tGood things happening to good people is at least as common, perhaps more common than what keeps us up at night: bad things happening to good people (that is, bad things happening to me and mine), or good things happening to bad people (that is, a thrice-divorced, womanizing drug addict who lives in a beachfront mansion getting paid a fortune to star in his next movie). When bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people we think all is right with the world. But should we not, for consistency\u2019s sake, wonder about happy times as much as we wonder about what seems unjust? Should we not be as puzzled by success as we are by pain? Is good news not just as potentially disturbing as bad news? <\/p>\n
\tPerhaps by looking at the uncomfortable issues backwards, we can gain some perspective: we can recognize that all in the world is not necessarily as we think it is or even as we think it should be. Maybe if we can understand why a day like the death of Jesus on a Roman cross can be a \u201cGood Friday, \u201d then we can understand that our own lives, whatever the immediate circumstances, can be at least as good, too.<\/p>\n
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