More Than Decor

Dear readers,

I trust you have all been enjoying the spring-like weather. The official first day of spring is at the end of this week, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of some wintry weather between now and the middle of April. It has happened before, so I’m usually a bit cautious about breaking out the spring wardrobe too early.

As we draw near to Good Friday and Easter, I believe it would be good to take some time and reflect on the Cross. The following is excerpted from an article by a favorite writer of mine. The article is entitled “An Ordinary Cross.”

“The cross,” someone once said, “has become so ordinary that we hardly see it anymore.” The thought struck me as I walked through a shop with items to buy stashed in every crevice: frog shaped garden statues, multi-colored curios, inventive décor made from soda cans, beach glass, and refurbished car parts. Occasionally surfacing through blanketed floors and ornamented walls were cross shaped or cross-adorned objects, so ordinary in a shop so out-of-the-ordinary, they were almost hard to notice at all.

“The cross has become so ordinary that we hardly see it anymore. The thought altered the remainder of my browsing. How can this be true? How can an image once shameful enough to bow the proudest heads become ordinary? Could the gallows ever become innocuous? Would the death sentence of someone near us ever fail to get our attention, much less blend in beside earthenware and figurines?

“Perhaps it is true that the cross has become so ordinary we hardly see it anymore. But if the cross has become merely a symbol of Christianity, an emblem of one religion in a sea of others, it is still a symbol that stands apart from the others. Even as an image among many, it remains conspicuously on its own.

“For those who will not look carefully, the cross can be seen as foolish or not seen at all. It can be stripped of meaning or emptied of beauty, hope, and depth. But it cannot be emptied of Christ. The message of the cross may be nothing to some, but to those who will stand in its shame and offense, scandal and power, it is everything.”

The cross is more than decor; it is the symbol of the price paid for our salvation.

Just thinking,

Pastor Jerry