GOOD FRIDAY STRIPES:
“If I’d a’ had somewhere else to go, I’d a’ went.”

Recently passed NASCAR great Cale Yarborough made this statement in 1970 after an unavoidable crash at historic Darlington Raceway. Few drivers are spared from collecting, win or lose, the storied tracks most notorious symbol of car damage, the Darlington Stripe. A stripe gained in ‘70 by Yarborough that resulted in the Wood Brothers famous number 21 Mercury pointing the wrong direction with two wheels propped on a guardrail. I’ve thought about this quote over Passion Week’s morning coffee. I’ve thought about one who asked his three closest friends, in today’s lingo, his “life group”, to go with him to a garden to pray, the friends complied & went….to sleep. Later, in the same garden, one of his pit crew of 12 went for silver coins that sent him to go collect some stripes far worse than those from a South Carolina racetrack. Day broke & an 11 man crew remained. One had the courage to go on, ten decided to go, ten just went. The loudest, brashest. & sword swingingest of the ten later offering the loudest & brashest denial, accompanied by a rooster singing backup. The one they abandoned, one who went on to be wrecked by whips, beatings, a mocking crown of thorns, & then forced to go on a path of suffering to the ultimate suffering. Nails, dice rolled for His clothes, & more mocking from signs doubting his kingship & voices telling Him to save himself. He was a king, was capable of saving himself, capable of avoiding the stripes. He could’ve decided to go & been gone. Instead, He never left, He never went. Propped on a cross, hung by spikes but attached by love for the times that I end up facing the wrong way with more than just two wheels off the ground, both victim & perpetrator of my choices. No checkered piece of cloth was waved at the end of that Friday, the victory flag wasn’t waved ’til Sunday. Waved in the form of a rolled stone & empty burial garments by One who went to his last meal with one who would go to sell him out, One who my dad used to say, “wasn’t for the sweet by & by, but the bitter here & now”. One who could’ve found somewhere else to go, but never went…