The Cross

     Although I was listening to, and moved by, our church Good Friday service, I found myself slipping into poem mode. I was thinking about the contrast between the sanitized, religious symbol, cross seen in our culture, with the crude instrument of torture it was in Roman culture. The polished pine cross displayed in the front of our sanctuary is nothing like the gruesome one on which Jesus displayed His love.  

 

The Cross 

 

It was not shiny and silver

like the one hanging around my neck,

or pristine and polished

like the one in the church auditorium.

 

It was ugly and bloody and brutal.

It is beautiful and blessed and healing. 

It was the symbol of guilt and suffering and shame.

It is the symbol of cleansing and sacrifice and victory.

 

It was an instrument of death in long ago Rome.

It marks the entrance to heaven, our true home, 

and to the Lord who loved us to death

and, through His power, back to life again.

 

The Cross. 

 

4/4/26