From a reverend fella named Ken Collins:
Calling the day of the Crucifixion ‘Good’ Friday is a designation that is peculiar to the English language. In German, for example, it is called Karfreitag. The Kar part is an obsolete word, the ancestor of the English word care in the sense of cares and woes, and it meant mourning. So in German, it is Mourning Friday. And that is what the disciples did on that day—they mourned. They thought all was lost.
I’ve read that the word good used to have a secondary meaning of holy, but I can’t trace that back in my etymological dictionary. There are a number of cases in set phrases where the words God and good got switched around because of their similarity. One case was the phrase God be with you, which today is just good-bye. So perhaps Good Friday was originally God’s Friday. But I think we call it Good Friday because, in pious retrospect, all that tragedy brought about the greatest good there could be.
And in that, Sarah has the right idea. For Christian believers, it is a very Holy and Mournful day, but holds the promise of great Hope and the essence of Christian belief ... that we will be united with God and his son Jesus after our own deaths. Just as his apostles and mother found the tomb empty after the Crucifixion, so will our souls return Home. I still have a little trouble with the teaching that God allowed his son to die in a horrible way to save our mortal souls. Being God, an all powerful and knowing God, you'd think he could've thunk a better way. But, I'm not God and can't see the completed tapestry up there on the big wall in Heaven. We're all threads in that tapestry and since He calls the shots, I just go along and hope that I'm doing my part in holding that tapestry together! So, from an innocent, hopeful, often joyful, and loving 9-year-old to you .... "Happy" God's Friday!
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