“Beauty cannot be deeply appreciated until a soul has been touched by deformity.”

“Spring warms us because winter has chilled us.”

For so many, the deformity of life is denied or avoided. But like early spring weeds, if left unchecked, ugliness eventually takes over. It doesn’t just go away. But we are tempted to ignore it, because somehow we know, we’re often powerless on our own against the brokenness that can be our reality.

God understood this. We needed a better plan. Talk to anyone who has experienced painful injustice. A child is murdered or molested. A man of influence is blackmailed and imprisoned. A woman is beaten by the man who said he loved her. These people do not want the ugliness brushed aside!

For Christians and non-believers alike, historically a blameless man was brutally killed one Friday two thousand years ago in Jerusalem. He was not protected by the Jewish law of the day that declared a person could not be tried, judged guilty and sentenced to die all in the same day. What could have gone down in history, however, as a senseless crime of just another revolutionary instead has revolutionized countless souls for two thousand years. Why?

Because an innocent man and a perfect God understood that we cannot have beauty and new life without the suffering or the new life becomes meaningless.

And that’s why today is called GOOD Friday though it’s a day millions of people remember a death.

What is your philosophy of beauty?