Good Friday

"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;


yet we esteemed him stricken,
 smitten by God, and afflicted.


But he was pierced for our transgressions;
    

he was crushed for our iniquities;


upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    

and with his wounds we are healed.


All we like sheep have gone astray;
    

we have turned—every one—to his own way;


and the LORD has laid on him
 the iniquity of us all."

-Isaiah 53:4-6

Today is "Good Friday." And it was horrible. The brutal execution of Jesus the Christ--and worse, God's furious wrath against evil upon him--in the place of those who truly deserved it. In my place. 

But it is good. Because it was his plan from the beginning to redeem his fallen people. Because in his death he broke the power of death. Because in this divine exchange, our sin for his righteousness, we may now approach the Living God, the One for by whom and for whom we were made, and meet the love of our Father instead. 

This gospel still blows my mind 14 years after the first Good Friday and Easter that I really believed in it. This morning even in my tiredness and distraction, God met me in Isaiah 53. 700 years before the cross, God spoke about the life and death of Jesus the Messiah, and through those same ancient words he explains it to me still.