I took this picture just after sunrise on Holy Saturday. There’s a whisper of the Divine in it. May you have a Holy and Blessed Easter.

Up on the hill, there’s a cross with a black shroud draped across it. It’s an unavoidable reminder to anyone driving past that today has special meaning.

As a youth pastor, I get to hear all the latest slang. Now, I confess, sometimes I don’t notice it until it’s already lost its novelty. No master of hipness am I, by any means. But I’ve picked up on one the past few months. “Sick.” It means … awesome, fantastic, great, incredible. It caught me a little off guard, and you probably won’t hear me using it, since I’m an old fogey. It shouldn’t have surprised me though. I mean, I’m part of the generation that told each other things were “wicked” and “bad”, with the meaning that they were … well, awesome, fantastic, great, or incredible.

Words are always being reinvented and repurposed. Perhaps teenagers of generations hence will express admiration for the hottest bands and grooviest movies by saying they’re “fatal”. (Actually, I kind of like that. “Dude, have you seen that new flick? It’s totally fatal.”) Paris Hiltons of the future will look dreamily into the camera and proclaim that the new sparkly-spangly purse is soooo fatal.

Anyway, what does this have to do with the black-shrouded cross? It’s simple.

Today is Good Friday.

And yet … we are remembering an act that stands among the list of tragedies for the ages. A man who came to change the world was beaten, tortured, marched through the city, and attached to a wooden cross with metal spikes. He was brutally stabbed in the side, and the blood and water flowed, mingling with drops of blood already streaming from the wounds inflicted by the thorns piercing His head. After all that, He died, abandoned by most of His friends; even His own Father turned His back on Him.

The day set aside to focus on that horrible experience is called GOOD.

It’s bad, alright. It’s sick. It was even fatal.

But it was Good.

In that moment of sacrifice, in that moment of surrender … He conquered death. He conquered sin.

The Victor, already crowned, slipped behind enemy lines. The enemy thought he had won; he thought it was over.

And it was … but not in the way the enemy thought.

In that mystical, miraculous, momentous event … eternity was opened to the mortal. The gap was bridged, the gates were flung open, the welcoming party began.

The black shroud is appropriate for the horror experienced by the God-Man on that day.

But oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. It was GOOD.

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocing voice,
Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I knoww that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast inJesus Christ
His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom.

— Stuart Townend

A man celebrated his golden wedding anniversary by eating a 50-year-old tin of chicken.

Les and Beryl Lailey, of Denton, Gtr Manchester, were given the chicken in a hamper on their wedding day in 1956.

The Buxted Chicken tin remained in their kitchen cupboard until the couple marked 50 years together this month.

“We kept it safe, and I always said ‘on my 50th wedding anniversary I’m going to eat that chicken’ - so I did,” said former soldier, Mr Lailey, aged 73.

“When we got married I’d just come out of the Army and we had very little money, so we did our own buffet.

“We got a hamper as a present and included in it was this whole chicken in a tin. We didn’t use it and packed it away and kept it.”

Tight vacuum

Mr Lailey, a former soldier, said he had not felt ill since eating the chicken.

The pair met at an Irish pub in Hulme, Manchester.

“I had to go back to the Army almost straight after we met, but we kept in touch by writing letters. I came home and we got married,” Mr Lailey added.

Prof Eunice Taylor, a food safety expert at the University of Salford, said: “Canned food can last indefinitely if it has been sealed properly, although the normal shelf life is about six months.

“If it’s done at high temperatures and under high pressure, then the process should create a tight vacuum.

“If anyone is going to eat old canned food, I would suggest they heat it thoroughly first of all, just in case to be extra safe.”

…. just a quote I ran across that I really liked, as a minister.

Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this, for your sermons last but an hour or two, your life preaches all the week. If Satan can only make a covetous minister a lover of praise, of pleasure, of good eating, he has ruined your ministry. Give yourselves to prayer, and get your texts, your thoughts, your words from God. Luther spent his best three hours in prayer.
–Robert Murray McCheyne