There is also this matter of the cross. What role does it play and what does it mean in this whole process? Certainly there is the Mystery of the atonement—the substitutional atonement and exemplary atonement of Jesus’ death on the cross. It is said that in the Mystery of God’s Love and forgiveness, Jesus’ sacrificial death has closed our corrupting distance from God and opened wide the door to His presence and grace, now and forever. That’s a lot to get your mind and heart around. And if you are having some trouble with it on one level or another, you have lots of company. But don’t let it deter you or put you off. It is something that is often better understood with time, life experience, and deepening prayer relationship with Him.
But we are also invited to our own cross experiences. And please understand that if you accept His invitations, these cross experiences unavoidably attend them. Certainly there is the heightened sense of personal anguish and pain for the suffering and loss of other people in the world, and the heightened sensitivity to your own shortcomings and failings. That’s all part of taking up your cross and following Him. But there can also be more solitary, dark or desert experiences that attend the fading centrality of temporal identity and attachments, replaced in time by more joy and peace in closer identity with Jesus and God. This is a very personal cross experience, a more profound and intimate cross experience which, inexplicably, mysteriously, follows and relates to a shared cross and resurrection experience with Jesus.
First written: November 2006 – January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007
