Jesus Dies on the Cross

I do not like this image. 

I find it ugly, disturbing… I don’t want to look at it. 

But seen from a certain angle, that makes perfect sense. What was ever uglier than the way that we betrayed and assassinated the King of Glory? Maybe we have seen those crucifixion images too often, and gotten desensitized to the shocking nature of not only how the crucifixion is depicted, but the ugly, disturbing nature of the crucifixion itself. 

I have seen Jesus on the cross thousands of times. A lamb, sliced in half by death, bleeding in some way for the whole world? That’s a new one. 

What a paradoxical thing is this Life in the Way of Jesus. Beauty from ashes. Life from death. That the most grotesque murder human minds could imagine and carry out somehow rebounds to my forgiveness, to life eternal for anyone willing to throw the weight of their soul on this battered, torn, and broken man? Amazing. 

I do not like this image. But, I love it for what it represents. 

In the same way, as I look back on my life, I see a procession of ugly moments, failures, and wounds both received and given. I do not like looking at them. 

But as I juxtapose those images from my life- those moments of shame that I would rather no one ever see- with the image of a Lamb, sliced in half, for the sake of the world, I begin to think that if God could bring beauty, healing, and life from the ugliness, pain, and death of the crucifixion, maybe He can do the same with all those moments from my life? 

As I look back on my life through the lens of the Cross, and Christ crucified, I realize that there’s not a moment in my life that God cannot redeem, cannot heal, cannot use to bless others. 

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and says “I am making all things new!”