{"id":70321,"date":"2020-04-10T14:21:55","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T18:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=70321"},"modified":"2020-04-10T14:31:11","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T18:31:11","slug":"reflections-on-this-good-friday-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2020\/04\/10\/reflections-on-this-good-friday-christian\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on this &#8220;Good Friday&#8221; [Christian]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span style=\"color: #800000;\">From DSC:<br \/>\n<\/span><\/em><span style=\"color: #800000;\">I started today (Friday, April 10th) out by reading the <em>Verse of the Day<\/em> from BibleGateway.com &#8212; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Rom.5.6-Rom.5.8&amp;version=NIV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span class=\"passage-display-bcv\">Romans 5:6-8<\/span> (<span class=\"passage-display-version\">NIV)<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span id=\"en-NIV-28054\" class=\"text Rom-5-6\"><sup class=\"versenum\">6 <\/sup>You see, at just the right time,\u00a0when we were still powerless,<br \/>\nChrist died for the ungodly.<br \/>\n<\/span><span id=\"en-NIV-28055\" class=\"text Rom-5-7\"><sup class=\"versenum\">7\u00a0<\/sup>Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person,<br \/>\nthough for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.<br \/>\n<\/span><span id=\"en-NIV-28056\" class=\"text Rom-5-8\"><sup class=\"versenum\">8\u00a0<\/sup>But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:<br \/>\nWhile we were still sinners, Christ died for us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">It took me a while to grasp why Christians call this day &#8220;Good Friday,&#8221; as it represents <em>one of the darkest days in history.<\/em> <em>&#8220;What&#8217;s so good about it?!&#8221;<\/em> I often wondered. <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">For we Christians believe that our LORD Jesus Christ had to <em>knowingly<\/em> go forth into a very hostile situation, upset the power structures of the day, and knowingly and willingly journey into His own torturous, pain-filled <em>murder<\/em>. A murder that would pay a price, a debt that He didn&#8217;t owe. He paid for that price for us&#8230;for our sins.. for me&#8230;for my sins. It was our\/my debt to pay, not His.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">And what&#8217;s more&#8230;Christ, hanging on the cross, experienced the feelings that God had forsaken Him. If you&#8217;ve ever had those feelings and that experience, it is a deep, dark, lonely place. Everyone else and everything else feels like a million miles away. It&#8217;s a place of being in one of &#8212; if not THEE &#8212; harshest deserts that life can throw at us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cAnd about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, <strong>\u2018Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?\u2019<\/strong> that is, <strong>\u2018My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/strong> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew+27%3A46&amp;version=NIV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Matthew 27:46<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Mark+15%3A34&amp;version=NIV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mark 15:34<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">But Jesus Christ did pay the price. He completed the work that He was sent to Earth to do. By doing what He did, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Mark+15%3A38&amp;version=NIV\">Jesus Christ tore down the obstacles of us being in relationship with &#8212; and in direct communication with &#8212; our Heavenly Father.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">So that IS good news. It&#8217;s because of what the LORD Jesus did on the cross that Christians say that this is a &#8220;Good Friday.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Thank you LORD for YOU!<br \/>\nThank you for your grace, courage, strength,<br \/>\nforgiveness, and for your extravagant love!<br \/>\nOn this day we remember what you did for us.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">And on Sunday, let us exclaim:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-59196 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Happy-Easter-2017.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"566\" height=\"650\" srcset=\"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Happy-Easter-2017.jpg 566w, https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Happy-Easter-2017-131x150.jpg 131w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 566px) 100vw, 566px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From DSC: I started today (Friday, April 10th) out by reading the Verse of the Day from BibleGateway.com &#8212; Romans 5:6-8 (NIV): 6 You see, at just the right time,\u00a0when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7\u00a0Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,425,95,500,248,480],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daniel-s-christian","category-faith","category-global-globalization","category-hearts-matters-of-the-heart","category-relationships","category-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70321"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70333,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70321\/revisions\/70333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}