I want to tell people the meaning of the cross. Not the cross that hangs on the wall, or around people’s necks. But the real cross of Christ. Scarred and bloodstained, his was a rugged cross. Many will react to this message, but it is the truth. With all my heart, I want people to know this truth: He loves you. He is willing to forgive you your sins.
Life is wasted if we do not grasp the glory of the cross, cherish it for the treasure that it is, and cleave to it as the highest price of every pleasure and the deepest comfort in every pain. What was once foolishness to us — a crucified God — must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.
Before we see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.
The Cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go to in order to restore broken community.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering — for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
The Cross of Christ… by a creative act, God transformed the torturing to death of an innocent person into a source of new life for innumerable people.
The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.