The cross stands as a center point of History. I am undone and I am made new when I intentionally place myself at its feet. Staring at the cross draws the conflict to a head and leaves me feeling desperate and elated at the same time.
Holding onto both of those feelings is hard; much harder than it is to focus on one of them and let the other one fade. We land on one side or the other — the grief of what it cost, or the relief of what it bought — and we stay there. It’s easier. Holding both at the same time is almost unbearable.
I tend to land on the side of grief; it’s where my mind goes most easily. That isn’t because I’m overly remorseful; it’s because I know myself. The lies, the struggles, the falling short of aspirations. I know that the man I am isn’t the man I am called to be, and the cross reminds me of the cost of those failures. To look on the One crucified and be reminded that I played a key part in His death is crushing.
In the movies there’s always a scene where a hero is wandering in the desert, stranded, slowly dying. The desert doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t care about your intentions or your story. It just takes. The hero stumbles forward, desperate, and then — there it is. Water. Palm trees. Relief.
And just as they plunge their face toward it, the mirage dissolves, and they hit sand.
That image is also a representation of my life before Christ. Every ‘oasis’ turned out to be sand — everything I ran toward that promised to be enough and wasn’t — I have plunged my face into more of those than I can count. And I was running toward them, because I was thirsty, and I didn’t know where the water was.
The cross is where God shows me what water is and where to find it. He reaches through the desert and picks me up from the burning sand. Not gently, not cheaply — but finally, and completely. It is the culmination of everything He has been moving toward since the first mirage fooled the first person. And if I can stop long enough to actually see it for what it is, I can, through the agony of that cross, come to God as pure as the man who died there.
As pure as the one on the middle cross.
I am going to be in the presence of God — not as a guest, not as a visitor permitted entry on good behavior, but as a son, called home by a Father who paid for my return himself.
And it is while walking through the threshold of that home, reaching for my Brother, that I see what it cost Him.
His hands. His feet. His side. His head.
My homecoming is not without a price. Someone bore it. And He is standing there in the doorway, wounds still visible, welcoming me in.
I keep a song on repeat sometimes when I need to find my way back to that image. Audrey Assad wrote it, and the title is the expression of what I experience when I’m standing in that doorway: Where Joy and Sorrow Meet.
That is the cross. Both things, at the same time, unbearable and beautiful. I don’t want to keep choosing only one.