The Cost of Hope

Today is Good Friday. The beginning of our Easter weekend. We love the time off!! Easter egg hunts and sticky little mouths and fingers. It's a fun time for family and friends to enjoy together. But for those of us who are Christians, it is also very sobering. It reminds us that hope - the very reason we have to celebrate! - was very costly.

Easter is determined by lunar calendar, which changes every year. So this celebration weekend was unlikely to correspond exactly to the weekend Jesus died. We understand this would have been a Passover weekend, and Passover was a specific date in the Jewish calendar. There has been much scholarly speculation over which historical date it could have been, including whether his death could have happened on Friday at all, since it does not appear that Passover falls on a Friday around those dates. It is interesting to follow those arguments. But while it can be easy to get lost in the intellectual dynamics, one important fact remains.

Jesus died.

On purpose.

To pay a ransom to the "prince" of this world.

And to stand as the perfect human before a holy God.

To stand in place of each one of us here who has failed.

To gift us life, in place of the death we had earned.

A gift from God himself!

A terribly beautiful gift.

Offered to anyone who will take it.

Without it we have no hope.

There is nothing for us beyond the grave.

But with it, hope lives!!

The price is paid!!!

Live!!!

No photo credit