When I was a kid I always thought it was awesome that at 3:00 p.m. on Good Friday the sky frequently got dark or it rained.  I was a serious little girl and a conscientious teenager, and took my Lord's crucifixion remembrance quite seriously.

Even as a young adult I still marveled at the fact that sunny Good Fridays often reversed themselves and turned into thunderstoms mid-afternoon.  Of course by then my brain knew that storms coming from nowhere could easily happen but my heart still always wanted to think of them as special 3:00 p.m. on-the-dot miracles that could display something spectacular to the world.  Hmmm.  But now I was wiser.  Was the world even noticing such things?

Okay.  So now I'm almost 67, yet today (Good Friday 2009) started out rainy and somehow I liked that.  Storm clouds soon dissipated though.  In spite of that, I  still found myself searching the sky at 3:00 o'clock, the time of day that Christ the Messiah completed His work on the cross, for me.  (I'm pretty sure his death wasn't on April 10th, and I know for a fact it wasn't on Eastern Daylight Time!  No matter.  We are still remembering an historical event.)

To back up half an hour from the sky-searching:  at 2:30 today my husband and I colored some hardboiled eggs---just the two of us.  We hadn't done that for years but today we actually had time so decided to do it on a whim.  It was fun and it really wasn't as messy as in earlier years.  We enjoyed leaning over the counter, watching the dye tablets fizz, then we mixed and matched our egg colors to the shades we wanted.

As we stood back to admire our handiwork I realized it was raining even though the sun was still shining.  It was 3:00 p.m!  I grabbed my umbrella, ran outside and started searching the sky.  Lord, it would be so neat to see a rainbow right now!  It would be like a sign of covenant.

I walked around the block seemingly in vain, because there was no rainbow in sight anywhere.  But as I walked I reflected on Love's greatest gift to us.  By the time I came back to the house I was totally renewed in spirit.  Even without "my sign" I as a Christian know the end of the Good Friday story:  I saw it as I walked!  The blooming pear trees, the flowering quince, the daffodils, hyacinths and tulips, green grass, the budding tree leaves...all are part of the earth's cycle.  Hope is our sign!  Resurrection is on its way!