Good Friday 2021: A Time of Transition

I am in a time of transition in life. No longer a college student, I don’t have a home of my own or an “adult” job. I am living between two worlds. I know that I am about to move out of this in-between space and start living my adult life, and honestly that excites me because I can’t wait to see what God has for me. I also feel the weight of this season of life. I know that the choices that I make now are going to send me on a specific trajectory and I want to ensure that it is the right one for me. As I have opportunities come up, I have to diligently weigh whether or not they are good for me. In short, I am trying to discern where I fit in the world. As I navigate this, I have been asking myself, “How do you want to live your life?” My answer to this question is always the same. I want to live a life in which people experience the love of Christ through interacting with me. If I am doing that, the rest of the details don’t seem nearly as important. I’m constantly reminding myself that this is what it means for me to live the life that I am called to.

Today, I had an opportunity to walk through a version of the stations of the cross. There were 10 stations in which I got to interact with props and ponder guided readings and questions that helped me experience and reflect on the last 24 hours of Jesus’s life. I remembered the Passover meal that Christ celebrated with his 12 closest friends. He spent that night enjoying celebrating with them because he knew that it would be the last time that he would eat with them on earth, and he served them by washing their feet. From there he went to spend time in prayer and prepared himself to die for the forgiveness of sin. The rest of the experience was about his trial and crucifixion. The final 24 hours of the life of Jesus were spent serving people and just enjoying time with them.

I have done similar Good Friday experiences in the past. Growing up, I would go through the motions just because that was what my family was doing. As I got older, I would use the stations as a way to focus on whatever God was doing in my life. Typically, I had to contort the story to make it relevant to what was going on with me. This year was different. The very first reflection question of the experience was about how I would live my last 24 hours on earth if I knew that my life was almost over. To me, this question is the same as the one that I have been asking myself, “What type of life do I want to live?” I know that my desire is that my life will reflect Christ. I want people to know Christ’s love and my hope is that they will experience a little of it by spending time with me. That is an easy thing to say, but it’s much harder to know how to achieve this goal. Today, I took time to think about how Christ spent his last hours on earth and I now have a better idea of how I should live. He spent time in fellowship with people and he served them. He welcomed people to be with him despite knowing that they would soon betray him. I can’t help to think that people were attracted to Jesus because they felt like they could be fully known and fully loved by him. That is the type of life I want to live.

Christ chose to die so that my sins could be forgiven. He suffered for me and forgave my sins. As someone who has accepted that gift, I now have a calling to shape my life in a way that will reflect that gift. People should see Christ in me and should be attracted to him because of the interactions that they have with me. As long as I am pursuing a life like that, I am living out a key part of my calling. I do not know what type of job I will have or where I will live but I do know that I will be striving to live a life that reflects Christ.