hmm....I wanted to say something meaningful today, something that would help other people understand why it's so important to some people. But right now I'm kinda drawing a blank.....

well, for one thing, something you probably already knew: good friday is the day where we Christians remember the death of Jesus Christ. And Easter Sunday is the day when we celebrate his rising from the dead.

when Jesus was on the cross (which, by the way, is a very painful execution method used by the Roman Empire.....probably the worst kind of capital punishment ever invented by man—mostly because you suffer for hours without actually dying), a lot of people looked at him and thought, "if he could save others, why can't he save himself? If he's really God, why isn't he coming down from the cross and wiping out all the people who harmed him?"

I think I have an answer to that, or at least the beginning of one.

You see, most people know that nobody's perfect. We all do mean and horrible and selfish things. The Bible calls that sin, and it's got lists and lists of what qualifies as sin. But the thing is, God doesn't think of sin on a "magnitude level" like most of us. To him, a murderer is on the same level as someone who said one little lie: they both have sinned, and they both need to be forgiven. And since they couldn't save themselves, and God couldn't go back on his own rules, he came to earth as Jesus to take our punishment, so we could get a clean slate after sinning.

Jesus could have come down from the cross. He could have called up thousands of angels and clearly demonstrated to everyone that he was God, and they would have believed. But then who would have found the strength to kill him then? And if he didn't die, we couldn't be saved from our sins, and we could never renew our relationship with God. Jesus had to die. By doing so, he saved us all. And that's why we call this friday "good".