IN THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS

Look at the cross and consider the reason He is there. How it is always easier to get people to put a man on a cross than to take him down.

How, in all of time, we have chastised, condemned, castigated, and gossiped much easier than we have shown compassion, given understanding, sought truth or forgiven. Men sign treaties with less problem than they forget wars.

Indeed, after the Civil War, when the grass had long since grown green on the battlefields, men still hated as if the war were only yesterday. I was born in 1928; I knew a few such remaining folk personally. Who in the 1930’s and even in the early 1940’s were still fighting the Civil War. Old men and women who nursed their hate because they didn’t want to let it die.

Vengeance, thy name is me is the motto of far too many.

“I can’t forget. I won’t forgive.” “Don’t put me in the same group with her.” “We’ve got to move to a new neighborhood. I can’t live next to them.” “I can’t work in the same place with him.” “She, or he, drives me crazy.”

And it but emphasizes how often the cross stands for everything that man too often is not.

How it cries out: FORGIVENESS for that rebel man, REDEMPTION for his soul, STRENGTH for his weaknesses, SALVATION despite his sins.

Therefore with a prayer that is a shout loud enough to make your soul rumble. Let its shadow fall across your life each day. Let its message roam through your heart. Carry the cross to work with you tomorrow. Place it above the prices you set, the sales pitch you give, the promises you make.

Put it in the living room of your heart and home.

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