Good Friday at first blush appears misnamed.

What could possibly be good about a day that recalls the public execution of a peace-loving prophet falsely charged and wrongly convicted? But first impressions can be misleading.

Take that opening scene in the movie “The Martian.” While caught in an unexpected storm on the surface of the red planet, actor Matt Damon’s character is impaled by metal fragments from a flying antenna and left for dead.

Mark Watney’s friends abandon his lifeless body and blast off from Mars. They grieve their loss and reluctantly go on with their lives.

Subsequently, Mark regains consciousness and discovers that the metal that punctured his space suit has sealed in enough oxygen to allow him to get back to the space station.

Reality sets in. He can’t survive on a three month supply of food. This botanist’s scientific mind contemplates how he can survive.

He creates a greenhouse, fertilizes the soil, plants pieces of potato from the space station galley. But to irrigate the soil, he needs to create a flame to generate heat to create water from hydrogen.

Mark discovers a fellow astronaut’s small wooden crucifix. With his pocketknife he scrapes wood fragments from the cross into a pile of kindling and ignites the shavings.

As a minister, I find delight in the fact that it was a cross that became the means of hope that kept the astronaut alive. The cross was a source of life.

Good Friday is a day in which I contemplate a solitary figure impaled by pieces on a wooden cross and left for dead by his friends. There appeared to be no cause for hope.

But then came Sunday. What had seemed hopeless resulted in an unexpected ending. First impressions had been misleading. The One left for dead surprised His friends. He was very much alive.

Easter weekend invites us to contemplate possibilities not initially evident. Unanticipated unemployment may be the “cross” that allows for the dream job you couldn’t imagine becoming a reality. A dead marriage may be the means that finds you seeking help that can revive a relationship that seems beyond hope.

A doctor’s diagnosis might be the very thing that awakens your hibernating faith and motivates you to begin to redefine what it means to really live.

From my perspective, the cross and the empty tomb are what kindle our faith and fuel our hope against the backdrop of certain peril.

Rev. Greg Asimakoupoulos is a frequent contributor and columnist for the Mercer Island Reporter. He is the chaplain at Covenant Shores on Mercer Island. Contact him at AwesomeRev@aol.com.