Good Friday

Why is this day called Good Friday? That has never made sense to me. How could a day be Good when it was the day that Christ was crucified!? At our church tonight, we had a service depicting the Last Supper, betrayal, and the walk to the cross. Congregants participated in the Lord’s Supper (or communion) and reflected on the meaning of Good Friday.

I had to play the piano for this service. I played 2 pieces for the choir accompaniment followed by 2 more solo pieces for the Lord’s Supper. I performed an instrumental piece called “Come, Follow Me” by Sally DeFord for the passing of the bread (follow the link and then scroll down to the title and links to listen to a streaming MP3 of this tune) and a Lenny Seidel arrangement of “Jesus Paid it All” for the passing of the wine (or grape juice for us Baptists). I can't seem to find an online performance of Lenny's "Jesus Paid it All" so I'll record it myself on YouTube later on.

I play the piano every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday choir practices. During both solo pieces I messed up badly but recovered well. Later, a fellow musician mentioned how pretty the pieces were. I asked her if she noticed my mistakes and she said “No and as musicians we usually pick up on that stuff!” I was glad to hear that.

I don’t know why, but for some strange reason, I was particularly nervous about my performances for this service. I just tried to tell myself and that the only thing within my control was to play my best for Him. So, I like to think that’s what I did even though in retrospect I think I could have done better.

The important thing is that my talents are to be used to bring others into His presence and I think that was accomplished on Good Friday night even with my mistakes.