The Darkest Day

  There have been many dark days throughout the course of human history. Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD and wiped out an entire city. The black plague took a toll on the human population from 1346 to 1353 and touched every family in some way. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor devastated the US Navy and turned the harbor into a tomb. More recently, 9/11 sent close to three thousand people into eternity and has affected the health of first responders in the years since. And even more recently, COVID-19 became the worst pandemic since the black plague.

Today, Good Friday, is without a doubt, a remembrance of the darkest day in history. The Lord Jesus had been arrested the previous evening. He was then subjected to accusations, beatings, mockery and was passed back and forth between Pontius Pilate and Herod. Neither of these men wanted to be the one responsible for Jesus' execution because it could mean political suicide. In the end Pilate caved and handed the Lord over to the people but not without one final flogging. The soldiers affixed a thorny crown on his head and threw a purple (the color of royalty) robe over his shoulders and subjected him to ridicule. 

The people had become a rabid mob by then and demanded Jesus' crucifixion -- a humiliating and excruciatingly painful form of execution. They made Jesus carry his own cross through Jerusalem to the Place of the Skull where the soldiers nailed his hands and feet to that cross and erected it for all to see. And the people watched.

About noon the sky darkened and remained that way for three hours. At 3:00pm the Lord cried, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!" (Luke 23:46) and breathed his last. The veil separating the Holy of Holies in the Temple tore in two from top to bottom. And the sky cleared.

It was the day of Preparation and the Sabbath would soon begin. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had to hurry to prepare the Lord's body and entomb him before sunset. The tomb was new, having never received a body. The men lay Jesus there and rolled the stone in front of it. The women looked on. With heads bowed and shoulders hunched they all went to their respective homes to observe the Sabbath. It was a dismal ending to a dismal day, the darkest in history.

But Sunday, the third day, was coming . . .


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