{"id":16660,"date":"2026-03-10T13:14:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/good-friday-reflection\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:02:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:02:02","slug":"good-friday-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/daily-devotions\/holiday-devotions\/good-friday-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Friday Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. &mdash;Isaiah 42:1 (NRSV)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There is a long walk I take when I&rsquo;m in northern California. It starts in Sausalito, meanders into Mill Valley and ends near Tiburon. The route veers from the road onto a path through wetlands. A number of small wooden bridges cross streams connected to the massive bay.<\/p>\n<p>I was walking over one of these bridges on Good Friday, where I sometimes can spot a graceful crane. Floating down the river right toward me came a brown, dried-up Christmas tree.<\/p>\n<p>Had someone finally taken down their tree this week? Or had this sad reject been in someone&rsquo;s backyard and just now been thrown in the stream?<\/p>\n<p>The tree was a real, if strange, reminder that Christmas was over. All the joy over the special birth was gone, dried up like this useless Christmas tree. Today, the baby who&rsquo;d been the source of all that rejoicing was the man nailed to a different kind of tree.<\/p>\n<p>The carols had become dirges, the incense was replaced by myrrh to anoint His body, the candles extinguished in the dark of a day without light. And yet it was this event for which the baby had been born.<\/p>\n<p><em>Jesus, give me the courage to journey with You from Your joyful birth to this grief-drenched day.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. &mdash;Isaiah 42:1 (NRSV) There is a long walk I take when I&rsquo;m in northern California. It starts in Sausalito, meanders into Mill Valley and ends near Tiburon. The route veers from the road onto a path through wetlands. A number of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[315],"tags":[189,71,12],"ppma_author":[627],"class_list":["post-16660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holiday-devotions","tag-church","tag-easter","tag-lent"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Good Friday Reflection - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Good Friday Reflection\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. &mdash;Isaiah 42:1 (NRSV) There is a long walk I take when I&rsquo;m in northern California. 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