We refer to this frightful Friday as Good Friday.

Good. When I hear good, I think fine, decent, nondescript.

As in the generic, catch-all answer I receive from my boys in response to my motherly after-school questions: How was your day? How did your test go? How was chapel?

The etymology of the word good shows that it used to connote something fit or adequate, having the right or desirable quality.

This morning, I spent a few stolen moments thinking through the list of other adjectives that come to mind as a descriptor of this dark Friday.

__________ Friday?

Frightful Friday,
When the One rightful son,
Before an onlooking crowd,
The curse did become?

Unnatural Friday,
When the light of life
Darkened noonday sun
With un-eclipsed strife?

Diseased Friday,
When the Great Physician
Willfully contracted
Our terminal condition?

Execution Friday,
When the Man Divine
Donned death’s shroud
For humanity’s crime?

Foretold Friday,
When He who wound time
Was bound to a cross
In a death sublime?

Good Friday, 
Yes, that covers it all.
Jesus cleared Our Way
Home from the Fall.

Nothing about what happened on that Friday we commemorate today feels right. Yet, it was the only way for the Father to bring back His wayward children, long exiled from home. The Father foretold this Friday, the Son came for this Friday and we are God’s children and Jesus’ siblings on account of this Friday.

Fitting. Having right or desirable quality. Good.

Good Friday, indeed.