Good Friday?

One spring, day on an apple farm in. Michigan, some men who had been pruning an, orchard made. a great pile of branches about 100 yards from the farmer’s barn. One morning the farmer saw a bird carrying to that pile of prunings materials for a nest. So he marked the spot with a stick. At sundown, with the bird flying about and chirping wildly, the man reached into the pile and tore the nest apart. If the bird were thinking, she was saying to herself, “How cruel this man is!” Next day the man saw the bird again trying to build at another place in the same pile. Again he marked it with a stick, and at night he destroyed all the work that the bird had done. No doubt the bird’s wild flutterings and chirpings were bird language for “This evil man! How terrible he is to destroy my nest!” On the third day he noticed that the bird was building in a rose bush near the house. He smiled and let the bird alone. The farmer had intended to burn the branch pile, and he knew if the bird were allowed to build among the branches, the nest and its little fledglings would have been destroyed. So in great kindness he had torn the two earlier nest apart. On the cross of Calvary we see that there are no accidents! As Jesus hung there, “the just for the unjust,” it looked as though there had been an accident; that God had made a mistake. But on the third day after, when “God raised him for our justification,” all believers knew that “the cross was for our good” and so the previous Friday was called “Good.” Out of that seeming tragedy, Christ paid the eternal price demanded by God for our sins. “The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Dennis A Kastens, Once You Were Darkness, CSS, 1980, p. 80.

Looking for some Creative Easter Ideas for your Easter Party or event?

Easter icebreakers! Creative Teaching Ideas! Easter Children's sermons, Easter illustrations and Devotions and MORE! Get more than 80 creative youth ideas for Easter in the