Today is Good Friday? Many would question this day and would wonder what was so good about this day. But it was good, in that Christ, gave his life for us. With a thief on his left and right and encircled by a crowd of onlookers, Jesus gently and willingly stretches out his hands and accepts the torture of the nails. In the midst of this most intense agony, his heart remains on his people. “Father, forgive them, he prays, for they know not what they do.”

Jesus did not immediately die when they nail him to the cross. He suffered for three long agonizing hours first. The giver of life, who stood side by side with the Father at the moment of creation, was now dead. His mission on earth was nearly accomplished. He gave up his spirit, and gave us his life! When the crowds finally went away, a few of Jesus’s followers were brave enough to ask for his body so they could bury it. Two men carefully remove the body of Jesus from the cross and lay it in the arms of his waiting mother. Tears run down Mary’s cheeks as she holds the son given to her so many years before. Mary and the friends of Jesus prepare his body for burial and lay it in a tomb cut from solid rock and seal it. They have forgotten or perhaps failed to believe, the promise Jesus made to them, that he will rise from the dead.