TGIF? Not Really! Well, Maybe!

As times change, so do habits and institutions. Take restaurants, for example. TGIF has built its image on giving thanks that come Friday the work week is over and it's time to celebrate with food and friends--all on the way to a weekend of relaxation and recreation. No more, not in this economic climate. If now its "Friday Night Out" the mood has shifted for many from one of celebration to one of anxiety over not having a job at all. Once wanting only to "get away," many want rather now only to "get back to work."

In larger historic perspective, "Black Friday," as the Swedes call it, seems a more appropriate term than "Good Friday." Why call it good when Jesus was dead and all hope seemed gone? Few followers of Jesus who were aware of what happened outside Jerusalem on this day were in any mood to celebrate. Mourning and weeping were no doubt in great supply, not to mention fear and doubt. Was he really, after all, who he claimed to be?

One needn't dig very deeply into the modern mind to uncover the same malaise. When all is going well for us and according to schedule, it is not only easy to believe, but easy to divert one's attention from the labor of faith. But when that resiliance is jarred by potholes along life's way, the shallow faith beneath it is really shaken--if not in fact torn apart.

What matters in such times, both then and now, is finding some focus outside ourselves to give us hope--some hidden wonder, like Natalie Sleeth's hymn proclaims, "unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see." We come and go, as do our cultures, and what we need in all our comings and goings is something far more that we or they can ever provide.

Thank God it's Friday? Not really, if all that means is relief from our labors. Yet maybe, if re-entering the story of God's labor for us on the cross we are delivered by grace from the awful spectre of continually struggling to deliver ourselves.

"Black Friday" can only be seen as "Good Friday" on the other side of the cross, when while it is still dark we all come to behold an empty tomb and a risen Savior. Whatever our circumstance in coming there, it will soon be be clear that in receiving him as he comes to us there is always a future and a hope.