Look at The Cross

A Reflection on the Second Reading for March 7th, 2021:
Third Sunday of Lent

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​1 Corinthians
1.18, 22-25

Brothers and sisters: The message about the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
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Pause. Pray.

And then read more...

I vividly recall a Good Friday many years ago when I was completely overwhelmed by a supernatural understanding of the sacrifice God made for me by allowing His only Son to die on the cross. I was singing in the music ministry, my usual safe space in a church, and watching my fellow parishioners venerate the large wooden symbolic cross, when the truth of what it all meant brought me to my knees. He died for me: horribly… harshly… embarrassingly… whipped, scorned, beaten, bloody. He took the sin of the world up onto that cross with Him and forgave everything with one of His last earthly breaths.

And how have I responded to that sacrifice?

There are days that I am lukewarm at best about the gift of faith. I compartmentalize it at times, bringing it out when it is convenient or on the schedule. There are other days that I want to praise and thank Him in the middle of the street, yet I hide behind cowardice, worried that I might be judged or ridiculed. And other days still, when I can think my way right out of a relationship with Christ, convinced my wisdom is infinitely better.

He carried His own cross to Calvary. Exhausted… stumbling… bleeding… beaten: For me.

This is the power of God. Through this cross I have been saved, and what greater sign could there be?

​It wasn’t a cross like the beautiful, smooth, wooden crucifixes I display throughout my home. It was cut from a tree — rough and crude — heavy and filled with splinters that would pierce His body; stained by His blood. Only God would willingly lay down His life in such a dramatic way because He knows that in my weakness and humanness, I need dramatic signs. The cross is the ultimate dramatic sign of God’s unwavering, total, overwhelming love for us. I only have to remember to look. Let me never forget the overwhelming feeling of that Good Friday and let me carry it into every moment of every day in radical gratitude.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)




Sandy Graves

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