As I ponder the beauty and wonder of the horror of the God of all the universe hanging on a cross to die for me, I am reminded of something I shared in Wrestling with Wonder ...
EXCERPT:
Can
you imagine it? Watching your son arrested, beaten, spat upon, and then nailed
to a cross to die? The son you loved, the one you nursed and tickled, the one
you cuddled, whose boo-boos you kissed. The one who you gave up all your plans
and your former dreams to bear and to raise. The one who was supposed to make
all things right again.
Can you
imagine it? What it was like to watch him die?
Where is mercy? Where is favor? Where
is blessedness? Where are all these promises now?
They are fulfilled.
Fulfilled!
In ways Mary never could have
dreamed, never would have expected.
That is the strange dichotomy of the
cross, and of our lives. Here, at the cross, in his death, it all comes true.
Here, when she is shattered, crushed, broken, is the moment when God is doing
something so amazing, so incredible, so wondrous, that she could have never
imagined it.
In the
moment that encapsulates the very epitome of what it means for plans and hopes
to go awry, to die—in
that moment we find the most incredible, wondrous, breathtaking act of God of
all time. It is the moment of redemption, of glory, of splendor, of the answer
to all the prayers and hopes from the beginning of time until now. It is at
that moment that we find the salvation of humankind. The moment that all our
dreams came true.
Jesus cries,
“It is finished!” In the Greek, John uses the perfect tense to show that it is
completed, for all time, forever, perfectly whole and finished. Christ had
finished the work he was sent to do. He had, in that moment, redeemed us all. Forever.
In the worst
moment of her life, when God seemed absent, when all hope had died, God did his
most glorious work.
Commentator R. Kent Hughes relates this story:
“A small boy was turning the pages of a book of religious art. When he came to
a picture of the Crucifixion he looked at it for a long time, and a sad look
came to his face. Finally he said, ‘If God had been there, he wouldn’t have let
them do it.’ So the Crucifixion seems—until we understand what it really meant.
Then we learn that God was there on the cross. We learn that he willed it. We
learn that because of the cross, grace flashed in the lives of Simon the
Cyrenian, the daughters of Jerusalem, the crucifying soldiers, the thief, the
centurion—and thousands upon thousands since that day.”[1] Because of the cross, grace flashed into the
life of Mary herself. Yes, the precise moment when all Mary’s hopes died, when
all her plans came to nothing, became the moment of answer. Because of the
cross, all generations have called her blessed. At the cross, the Mighty One
did the greatest thing he could have done for us. He died for us. Through the
cross, his mercy extended to all generations. It was his mighty deed that
scattered the proud, lifted the humble, filled the hungry, helped Israel and
all the world. In the cross alone do we find ultimate mercy. Just as he
promised ... Just as he always promised.
I think it
may often be that way for us as well. That there, at the very place where our
dreams don’t come true, where our hopes are shattered, where all we see is
death—that is where God
is standing in the greatest power. Those are the moments, the places that
change the world, where we find a depth and wonder deeper than we ever dared to
dream.
[1]
R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word, Luke, Volume 2, That
You May Know the Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998),.395.
0 comments:
Post a Comment