The Word
"… and in Him you have been made complete." ~ Colossians 2:10
The Thought
Yesterday we had dear friends, who we haven’t seen in two years, surprise us with a visit. We met these friends while we lived in Oxford. We knew from the very beginning they were destined to become lifelong friends.
Hanging out with them in our living room, I recalled a conversation we had in their house in Oxford late into the evening one Saturday night.
We sat around the kitchen table on St John Street, one of Oxford's main thoroughfares. Tim and I entered through the No 12 Georgian-style stone-faced terraced house, only two doors down from where Oxfordshire-born painter William Turner lived at No 16. (Lyric and I had been studying Turner in school together, so this made the evening even more enchanting.)
Inside, our friends were waiting. The discussions we shared never disappointed, and usually lasted late into the evening, being broken up only by the necessity of catching the last bus of the night.
This evening was no exception. It's rare to find souls captured by the cross, I mean really captured. Where the Gospel is simply the Gospel, not "the Gospel AND" whatever the current trend of the time is. The Gospel in all its simplicity and wonder. The Gospel where Jesus hanging on a tree is enough, because He is enough and only He is enough. This is what we talked about into the wee hours of the morning: the Cross.
The Song of the Cross
As we enter Easter weekend, the cross consumes my mind. I am not sure why it does not penetrate my mind daily, every moment, but I wish it would. I wish its melody evaded every waking moment, transfixing my gaze from things below to things above. I wish its lyrics engraved themselves on my mind, transforming my thoughts to His thoughts. I wish its cadence etched fingerprints on my soul, transferring my longings to those splintered hands. I long for the song of the cross to be my song.
Because the truth is I still need the cross.
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