Out of the Mouths of Babes

Yesterday during the Children's Worship Time, I asked the kids about the key events in Jesus' life. They knew he was born on Christmas, and they could tell me he rose on Easter, but when I asked, "When did Jesus die?" the unanimous answer was, "Black Friday!" I suppose they should get half-credit for knowing it was on a Friday, at least. And I really have to admit that calling it "Black Friday" makes more sense at first blush than "Good Friday."

We call it "Good Friday" because, well, it's the best Friday in human history. On it our Savior died in our place, bore the penalty for our sins upon himself, and gave us the opportunity to be saved and gain eternal life. And that's good. That's good news -- gospel. We could readily focus more on the dying than the saving, and that would make it the blackest of Fridays. It was a day of mock trials, evil plots, whips and thorns and blood and nails and executions. It could not have been a happy day.

Yet we celebrate what happened in that all-too-necessary death. It was, after all, our sins which sent Jesus to the tree -- but it was love that kept him there until he died. And in death, love won the victory. Love made a way to save the soul of each and every one of us, a salvation by grace that would have been impossible otherwise. That makes it a good, good day.

You never know what kids will say, and you never know when they'll mix up the day Christ died with the day we fight each other over televisions. But we still teach them and pray they will one day accept the salvation offered by the one who died for us.