loolalooh
Well-Known Member
Heaven's Altar - Kerri-Ann Haye-Donawa
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Brutal and inhumane, scary in its stance, the Cross was carved to represent death. It was hewn by human hands to serve punishment and execute wrath upon its victim.
As a child, I didn’t understand the Cross. My young mind could not fathom the level of brutality that would drive nails into the hands and feet of a person while he hung dying a slow death. The gore of the scene I imagined disturbed me and so I would be careful not to conjure the image often. By the time I was a teenager, the Cross became more of an idea, a theological concept, an iconic representation of the Christian faith than it was a testament of the divine sacrifice.
But things change with age. My understanding of my own sinfulness and nothingness outside of Christ steadily becomes more pronounced as I mature. You see, the human propensity and uncanny ability to decline into sin makes us fragile. Our inability to stay the course of righteousness on our own means that we are in need of the bloody atonement that was wrought on the rugged Cross.
Visible to the eyes of the witnesses that day was the broken body of Jesus as He hung bleeding. But unseen was your sin, egregious and obscene, hanging there with Him. What Mary couldn’t see as she stood weeping for her son was my sin, ugly and wicked, hanging there mocking Him. Yet it is the invisible reality of what occurred in the spirit realm that day that still affects all of us today. It is the perpetual efficacy of the Cross of Calvary that ensures our continual victory.
Therefore, the gore of the Cross no longer represents death in my mind, but life. It represents the trading post of eternity, where His life was traded for mine. It stands defiantly and triumphantly between you and death, and bridges the gap between you and God. It stands as the greatest altar of sacrifice that has ever been built, an altar that bore the greatest sacrifice that heaven and earth has ever known.
The privilege is yours to run to the Cross without hesitation; welcome the ruggedness of its disposition. Embrace with gratitude the stained wood of Calvary, for therein lies our salvation.
Scripture Reference: “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished” - Romans 3:25
