Thinking of the Cross

Originally Published in Issue #4 on April 23, 2021

As I was going through my study of Matthew 27 (Jesus’ crucifixion), I came upon this quote. As we start this letter, I invite you to slow down, read this slowly, and do as it asks of you:

Feel it if you will. Let it happen to you if you dare.

Take the most precious friend of your life. The person with whom you’ve known joy and fun and sorrow. With whom you share the deep bonds of caring. Place him upon the cross and watch him writhe in pain.

The nails driven into those beloved hands are driven into our hands. The muscles excruciatingly stretched are our muscles. The terrible burning of his tongue and mouth is in our tongue and mouth. We feel it all as if we were there ourselves because the most precious person in all the world is there on our behalf.

Feel it. Experience it if you will.

– Lloyd John Ogilvie, The Cup of Wonder: Communion Meditations (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1976), 75

I have not yet gotten this from my mind. It has impacted my emotions profoundly when I think of the cross. It can be difficult to think of the sufferings of a man who I have never met physically. But when I mentally place that suffering upon one I love, capture that emotion, and place it upon what my precious savior has done for me, I feel his death in a new way.