Joy of the Cross

Melissa takes up the pen in this post,
opening an unexpected door to joy . . .

This year for the first time since I was a girl, I took part in a Good Friday Service. It focused on the Cross, that cruel symbol of a hideous death that my Lord Jesus endured for me. I found myself filled with joy all  day, just thinking about it. Excitement. It seems strange to even put that into words.

I steel myself when I deal with mousetraps or have to kill a wasp in the kids' bedroom window. I cry through the biographies I read to my kids, full of suffering of every kind which ordinary men and women endure in all ages. So what joy is there in thinking on the torture and death of One Who, of all men who ever lived, didn't deserve to die?

None.
 

There is no joy—at most there is relief when He said, "It is finished."  I think there is something grimly beautiful in His exquisite control after hours of lonely suffering and pain when He committed His Spirit to His Father, who had necessarily forsaken His beloved Son. Forsaken Him because that Son, Jesus, now carried all of my ugly, twisted sin on Himself.

But I was not steeling myself to remember His death—why joy?

The other day I met my newborn niece for the first time. The pain of this child's birth was only a few hours past but I watched her mother caress the dark hair and hold that baby close. Her life brought such joy.

For joy, my Lord Jesus endured a cross and my life is all wrapped up in His joy! I am one who needed life, mired in death as I was with the rest of humanity—death for now and death forever.

When I look at the cross, I can see through the suffering into the heart of God. How He loves me—one who had nothing to offer and everything to make Him pass me by. And who, now that I am adopted into His family, fails Him often . . .

There is joy in His love, which gives me life, and day by day patiently works out His beauty in me. Love, shown for all the world to see by His cross, fills me with joy.

"Let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
looking to Jesus, the Founder and Perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. . ."
(Hebrews 12:1–2)

© March 2013 by Melissa J. Robbins