Not your typical Friday

This Easter is a bit different for me from others in recent memory, mostly because it is the first time I have seriously contemplated Lent in the weeks before the holiday that so often gets overshadowed by family gatherings, big meals, and pastel-colored eggs. While my partial "giving up" of television was not 100% successful, that is not the point. I have thought more about what it means to give up something and replace it with something of meaning, something that challenges me, in the last few weeks than I have in a long time. It amazes me how clear some things become when we just take a minute to free ourselves of the silly things we fill our days with, and yet how hard it still is to filter them out of our lives.

Perhaps the biggest thing that has impressed me over these past few weeks and on this Good Friday is no matter how small the "sacrifice" (I use quotations because giving up some TV time can hardly be called a sacrifice), I realize that I cannot understand the meaning of that word as perfectly as our God can. I was not even capable of keeping this up consistently for 40 days, yet a real sacrifice was made for me whose magnitude I can't even fathom. I heard from someone the other day that sometimes we learn the most from Lent when we fail, because it so eloquently highlights how different we are from our Savior. We can't even come close.

We can't even come close, and that's why it's Good Friday. Good because no matter how much we try and no matter how much we fail, we have been given a gift: the chance to know God and experience a love deep enough that transcends our brokenness.

It's not a typical Friday because the love that allowed Christ to make such a sacrifice was not typical. His kind of Love is something we can't truly understand or ever hope to reciprocate, but it is something we can be grateful for. It is also something that urges us to go beyond ourselves and wonder what this gift requires of us, and what we can do to give atypical love to the people around us. Atypical love - let's remember that today.