What's so Good about Friday?

The acronym TGIF is one of those quirky features of the post modern era. So much does it reflect the “zeitgeist”, that it has turned itself into a global money making restaurant franchise. It’s basically saying, I’m done with the working week of drudgery - bring on the weekend. Lets’s eat, drink and be merry, for, come Monday we go back to our daily death. Now, you can eat in TGI Friday in Belfast, Dublin, Melbourne or Washington. And the menu and the decor will be the same wherever you go, no doubt.

Well, I say, Thank God it’s Good Friday!

TGIGF, I suppose.

Because the “good” in Good Friday is about a Life that passed through Death, and a Death that produced yet more Life. The one TGIF is a reflection of the negativity of the age we live in. Life is just to be tolerated and money to be earned, for the sake of those transient moments of pleasure when you can lose yourself in the drink and the crack and the fun.

Well, I’d rather live a life that goes on getting better and better and moving towards an unending and glorious future. Even if it means you don’t get to blow it all on one Saturday night. Its good to be back in Lisbon again and worshipping along with friends this afternoon, contemplating the Cross. Not that Ireland wasn’t fine. We spent four wonderful weeks there, were enriched, refreshed and inspired. But its nice to be home again. And just now, its Lisbon that feels like home.

In the run up to the first Good Friday, in all his popularity and acclaim, a few Greeks, (non Jews) came into Jerusalem asking after Jesus. They came up to Andrew and the others saying “We would see Jesus”. And in that instant, jesus perceives this is it. This is the moment I have been for. To give my life as a sacrifice, so that all men, whether jew or greek or any other shape or size, might see and know God. And so he said :

"The hour has come....

unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone;

But if it dies, it produces much grain."

So, Thank you, Lord, for allowing yourself to be sown, as it were, into the ground, and producing me ... the fruit!!!