Mmmkay, so hi, I'm Ren. I haven't posted before. I had a bunch of this huge intro post typed out, but that isn't going to happen. I suppose it's appropriate. You're finding out about me first, before anything else, what the biggest part of me is. I identify myself first and foremost as a Christian. It is so much a part of me that it's a part of everything I do. I've come a long way just listening to all this stuff about God before really really wanting to live as a Christian, not as someone who claims to know about God, but someone who knows him intimately, someone who talks to God and listens to God and wants to live just for God. I want to be that kind of person. But this morning, at church (I do spend a lot of time at church), I was inspired to write for the first time in months. The sermon was on the significance of the cross as a centerpiece of faith. And so this came to be.
Darkness began to lift off the field, dark silhouettes against the horizon even as the light came. A site of shame and humiliation, the lowest of law saw their end in the dirty field. The criminals, the thieves, the traitors, here they lie. The early morning was quiet, and the silence was heavy where the shouts of the people rang out the day before. The sun still rose on this place, this place of infamy where lives were ended.
A woman trudged up the hill in the dawn's light, as she returned to the spot where she stood the day before. Now she stood with different eyes, eyes that saw in place of disbelief, wonder and humility.
In front of her stood a cross.
The field was covered with the; twenty or thirty perched on a hill. Wooden, Roman crosses where only a day before men were slain upon these pieces of carpentry.
She stood in front of one cross that would remain forever in her mind, the face of one man who she could never forget. He hung there, clothing ripped to shreds, wearing a crown of thorns. Torn and bleeding, she had been one of the hecklers, mocking his name. This man, this king, was reduced to nothing but entertainment for the masses.
Everyone had heard of this man, all he had done. He was the supposed King of the Jews, a Messiah, sent by God. No son of God would hang on a cross as he lost his life.
This was all she believed, until she saw the work of his hands...the work of his heart. This man traveled to the ends of the earth, lending his hands to those who could find help nowhere else. He performed miracles, unlike anything the world had seen. Yesterday, she met the followers of this man. the spirit their eyes held was so different from the dullness in the eyes of other men. These eyes were not burdened with the troubles of the world. Even as they lost their master, their teacher, their grief held pieces of joy and purpose.
The words that he had spoken had changed not only these men but many others as well. And not just men were changed. The elderly, women, and children, the sick, the weak, the shunned: all who heard his voice were forever changed.
Now she stood in front of the towering cross. The wood was stained with crimson, splotched with darkness. These were the places where his blood had seeped into the grain of the wood. Marks were left where he was nailed to the wood, his feet and hands. This man was the one on earth who did not deserve this fate of his, one of pain and grief and of sorrow. His life and been spotless and pristine. He had lived without sin or error, even in persecution and in the slandering of God himself. He came to save this world...a world that rejected him all too readily, a world in need.
She knelt in front of the cross. She clung to the cross, weeping on the ground. As she knelt to the ground, her face touched the dirt, and her cheeks were smudged with soil. Her tears pooled on the ground. Each tear she cried was a piece of the brokenness, her heart...shattered to pieces, falling to the ground helplessly. As the met in a fresh pool on the earth, she was healed, mended by this man, whose life had been the price. The pieces of her heart as tears melded together again. Her heart, once hard as stone, became a living organ of new flesh.
A relief unlike any other touched her soul. She was at peace, fully at peace for the first time. Healing power made her not whole, but a new body with a refreshed soul. So she wept. She wept for the life of the Christ, for her own sins and her doubts, for the silent cries of a world in desperate need of the savior whom had been neglected. An earth once only dark and desperate was once again the unique work of God himself as the sun reached its height in the sky, casting a shadow across the ground. This shadow carried the darkness, the trouble, and the helplessness, and it would be the symbol of a revolution.
