Drive Time

As I drove to work on this Good Friday morning, having already spent far, far too much time in fuming and festering over wrongs done to me either by those who are condemned to eternal agony and thus, cannot be expected to know better, or by those who are bound for glory but remain as yet imperfect, I enjoyed the dearth of traffic and pondered holidays in general. Good Friday and Easter Monday are not designated holidays for IBM or ATT (my employer and customer), though July 4th is. But the ease of my commute this morning demonstrates that many employers do designate Good Friday a holiday.

This is a good thing. But having given cynicism a foothold, I raised an accusing finger against man and his depravity. What do we do with our holidays? On the 4th of July, we have picnics and watch fireworks and maybe go to the beach for the week. Do Americans typically celebrate America at all on the 4th of July? Is Good Friday just another day off like July 4th or Labor Day?

Just then I rounded a bend on the freeway to see church steeples silhouetted against the brightening blue morning sky. I imagined those steeples point to God. He is not in outer space, but our language gives us a conceptual association between 'the heavens' and Heaven.

So I am reminded that, on this day perhaps more than most days, we look to God in order to consider the magnificence and extraordinary grace of his purpose and to worship him over it.

I am reminded also that I should be looking, rather than at miserable human beings and our inevitable failures, to our Heavenly Father and his tremendous sacrifice for the successful and irrevocable redemption of our poor souls from our own failures as well as from the failures of others.