It’s Good Friday. I always feel extra reflective on this day.
As a kid, I wasn’t really aware of the significance of this day. I remember the year the realization hit me as an adult … that only a couple thousand years earlier, the things we read about in the Bible actually were happening.
As in … they were current events. Seriously if it were happening today, imagine the social media frenzy. It would be bonkers.
I’m in the middle of reading The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. It’s written from the perspective of Jesus’ wife. (Don’t freak out. It’s historical fiction.) Like with Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord books, and The Chosen, it’s making me think about what Jesus must have been like as a man. An actual man. I realize that most of the time, I think of him more as a fictional superhero. Or a supernatural spiritual being. To actually think of him as human, with the whole range of human emotions and the daily ups and downs and stresses of earthly life, is hard to wrap my brain around.
I appreciate authors and artists who are willing to risk stepping into a creative space and use their imagination to explore the world and reality Jesus might have inhabited. While I know it’s simply someone’s interpretation and not gospel truth, it helps give me a fuller, more complete three dimensional picture of Jesus. He’s no longer just a character in the Bible stories I’ve read since I was a kid. He’s so much more real than words on paper. He was a real dude. (FYI … calling him a dude helps me think of him as real.)
The more I move around in it, the more deeply I am falling in love with the creative part of life. Creative writing. Spoken word. Visual art. Dance. Music. Song. Poetry. They are avenues for me to connect with the emotional, expressive, playful, thoughtful part of God. It just makes sense to me in a way logical, analytical thought doesn’t.
I guess that’s just how I am built to engage the world. I’m so thankful for the people create art for me to engage with and know Jesus better.
So that’s where my head is at the start of this Good Friday. Jesus – the human man – is more real to me than ever. Which means the events I’m remembering today are also more real. And so are the emotions.
My heart feels heavy and grief-stricken today for what happened to Jesus … who is now starting to feel like an actual, real live friend of mine.
These Words of Mine 
Thank you for drawing me back to a focus on this part of the Story of Easter. In years past my focus on Good Friday was more about what experiences happened to Jesus, his followers and others. I experienced various emotions & spiritual thoughts about Christ’s sacrifice and felt more connected to Christs suffering & sacrifice.
Have felt a bit disconnected from my emotions about this prelude to the Resurrection… Thank you for planting the thought to remember this as if was happening today… and to contemplate Christ as experiencing this as a man. Still feeling challenged to connect with the Good Friday experience but more Hopeful. Blessings.