A Contemplation and Celebration of The Cross

04.15.2022
3 min

Just between the two of us…
It feels like there’s a divide.
Like we’re breaking into pieces:
(…our families, our churches, our society…)
Everybody picking their sides.

…a burning world of disagreement
between two or more opposing opinions.
We are like children in the crossfire
between two warring dominions.

Even inside our own heads
there’s a battle on every front
between doing what is right
and doing what we want.

Between choosing what is holy
and succumbing to the flesh.
We have all fallen short,
even at our best.

There’s an ever-growing gap
between our sin and God’s perfection.
There’s an uncrossable canyon
between our Hell-bent hearts and Heaven.

In our destruction, we are dead —
on the wrong side of this great divide
desperately in need
of a bridge between death and life.

We would rightly give up hope;
to death, we would concede…
were it not for Jesus
hanging there between 2 thieves.

A cross between two crosses.
The murder of an innocent man.
The quenching of God’s wrath
and the fulfillment of God’s plan.

Between B.C. and A.D.
the centerpiece of Time;
the eternal proof of God’s love for us
written between the lines.

This cross is our forgiveness,
the full payment for what we’d done —
an exchange that had been brokered
between a Father and a Son.

This cross can mend a splintered love.
Every regret, it can atone.
It is healing for the trauma
in broken hearts of broken homes.

This cross restores the soul.
It brings peace to every sorrow.
…turns the ashes of our past
into the beauty of tomorrow.

Between everything we’ve lost
Between every way we’ve failed
There is a King who chose to save us
hanging there between 2 nails.

For the Peters who deny him.
For the doubts of every Thomas.
Between a Thursday and a Saturday,
God made Good on what He promised.

This cross is our redemption.
The only healing for the nations.
The blood of Jesus Christ
is our one and sure salvation.

We will live and not die.
Our hope is found and not lost.
…because between us and God
there forever stands the cross.