GOOD FRIDAY

 

April 18, 2025

Coffee With Jesus

GOOD FRIDAY

Good Morning Jesus, I love you!

I’ve poured my first cup of coffee for the day, I was ready to sit down with you. Then I remembered the nails we picked up at our church a few days after our service for Ash Wednesday, March 25, the the day that our Lenten Journey 2025 began. Here we are on the morning of Good Friday, April 18, 2025 nearing the end of the road to Calvary. 

We’ve had the nails in plain view on our coffee table these past weeks, along with another nail we received last year at our Good Friday Service here in the chapel of our retirement community. I picked up all three nails and held them in my hand. Three nails, at first glance looking very much alike, but upon closer there are slight differences between each. Slight differences in size, form, texture, sheen, amount of tarnish and weight, but each functional for that which they are intended. These may be similar to but not the same as what may have been used to crucify YOU Lord Jesus. We’ll never know in spite of all the claims that have been made to have “the original nails of the crucifixion” locked away in some guarded reliquary. (Isn’t that like us Lord, wanting to put God in a box?) I’ve learned that these particular nails I hold in my hand are most likely used in woodworking or carpentry. If they do resemble the nails used to crucify You I find it nauseating and ironic that carpenter’s nails may have been used to inflict tortuous  pain on You, God’s Son. Your earthly father Joseph was a carpenter, and You probably a carpenter like Joseph prior to the beginning of Your ministry on earth.

As I held these three nails in my hand I noticed that one of the nails is magnetized, drawing a nail to one side and then another on the other side. Isn’t that true of our sins that these nails represent? We can be pulled into sin depending on with whom we associate? We can pull others into sin along with ourselves. Our sins, failings, flaws may be individual but they ripple out, affecting another person, our family, our communities, even our countries and the world . Each of us sin. It doesn’t matter to what degree we sin, sin is sin.

Today as I read the Gospel of John Chapters 18 and 19, I was struck anew by the sin of mob mentality. They were out for the shedding of blood, Your blood Dear Savior. Little did they realize that the blood they sought, by crucifying You would be the blood that could save them, save us all, eternally. Did any of them realize their error and confess their sin,  repenting after the fact believing in YOU? 

When I think of the weight of all the sins of the world, past, present and future, sins confessed and unconfessed, the weight of the cross must have been unimaginable. Only the Son of God would have strength, determination and purity of love for humanity to endure the humiliation, suffer all the torture and pain to rescue a wretch like me and those like me. All the weight of the sins of the world resting on Your shoulder on that long hard walk to Golgotha (the place of the Skull, Calvary). When I think of You there on the cross I want to weep, but I  also want to clap my hands and dance and sing with joy. Your death was only the beginning of our “never ending story”. You are the Alpha and Omega, there is no beginning or ending in eternity. Thank you Jesus for Your sacrifice for me and for others like me, for my sins confessed and unconfessed. I am so grateful for Your gift of  eternal life by your grace. 

John Chapters 18 and 19