A GOOD FRIDAY PLEA

It's Good Friday.

Almost everyone is at the beach except me.

Call me corny, kill joy or whatever you want to call me, but I certainly do not buy the idea of treating Holy Week particularly Maundy Thursday and Good Friday as a time to have fun. It is a time to reflect on our lives, repent and ask forgiveness from God for our sins.

Most people I know have gone to the beach for the duration of the week to take a swimming expedition for the flimsy excuse that they would not want to get bored in the city on Holy Week. Others have gone out of town or out of the country. Some say it's so lonely here that they would rather go shopping in Hongkong or Singapore to while the time away and come back when everything has gone back to normal.

I am deeply saddened by this attitude. Why of all days do you have to choose Holy Week as a time to unwind? There are 365 days in a year when you can do all of these, but please not on Holy Week or Good Friday at that.

Could you not devote this week to Jesus? All HE is asking is for you to think of HIM just this once. After all HE suffered so much, subjected himself to extreme pain and humiliation and died on the cross through no fault of his own but to save us for our sins.

Can you imagine yourself going to jail and being given a life sentence or worse a death penalty for a crime committed by someone else? Surely you wouldn't want that would you? But HE willingly did it for us without nary a word of complaint.

Or can you take it in your heart to go to the beach or take a vacation when a family member or loved one had just passed on? No, certainly not. You would be grieving beside your loved one's corpse until he or she has been buried and probably feel desolate weeks or even months after that.

So how can you have fun on Good Friday knowing that the only person who loves you unconditionally, has always been there for you, has granted most of your requests if not all, has never left you regardless of whether you had been good or bad and who loves you even though you do not reciprocate HIS love by hurting HIM countless times, had just died on the cross for you?

I could not. I am grieving.

I can not imagine going through life without Jesus.

And if i am corny because this is how I feel or perceive it to be, then so be it.