Eastertide Week One: Remember the Cross

Day 5: The Beauty of the Cross

Eden’s gate slammed shut! The finality crushed Adam and Eve; their wailing grief echoed across the landscape and every living thing heard and felt the loss, too.

Since that day God has been on a rescue mission. All His energies have been and are directed to reach and bring back His damaged, distorted, deranged, and drunk-on-self children. Once we have been liberated from our slavery by our surrender to Him, He begins to chip away the sin, like Michelangelo slowly and tediously chiseling a block of stone to reveal a David or a Moses or a Pieta.¹ So over time our unique design in the Maker’s hands can be restored to reflect His image once again.

But true, complete restoration is only possible through the cursed tree; the cross proves He will stop at nothing to bring us back to Himself. It is God’s literal stake in the ground declaring, “Here, in this place of blasphemy that Satan has owned, I will reverse the curse. My Son Jesus is the way out of the mad insanity of self. He alone can bring my people back to Me and the love of the Trinity; back to the beautiful design I intended when I fashioned them.”