Criss-Cross

Our lincoln log cross hangs on the wall in the living room on this Good Friday.  My three boys and I didn't have one, and it's the one thing I wanted for my own place for as long as I can remember... ever since I was a little girl.  The kicker?  My son, Daniel, who was just four-years-old at the time, made the decision that would resonate with me every time I saw it on the wall. 

     "Hey, Mama??  Let's use lincoln logs to make our cross, and you can make a guitar string rope to hold it together."











The only thing holding it to the wall is the balance between the nail and the groove. 



And the only time it has ever fallen down was when it was knocked down by the Christmas tree we were trying to erect, and when I put it back on the wall I realized I didn't want another cross.  We didn't need another cross. 





So it is bound through it's center in a criss-cross with a silk-inlay Austrian guitar string.  The silk inside is the difference in these particular strings.... the softest fiber gives the highly flexible steel core the ability to ring and resonate unlike any other... just like our hearts.  Our strength can never be accomplished by hardening, but by being worked over by our Savior, by only becoming like the silkiest, softest, most open, bendable accommodators through the center of ourselves. 








The only way to keep from getting lost is to wrap ourselves around the cross.





When we are young and haughty, independent and headstrong, we are unfired steel, unable to see beyond even our own edges.  But this life we live, this God-given life, has a way of firing us down, does it not?  The hell-fire we go through, the pain, melts us into willingness to admit we don't have all the answers...forces us to puddle on the floor and rebuild from the inside out.  His death, His traumatizing death, forever in our minds is really the only act of love strong enough to ever get our attention... to really get our attention.




Our food today is that the death of Jesus Christ was already overcome by His birth in the first place....the birth a promise, the death the actual delivery of the promise, and... in the resurrection: the basis for everything we believe, that good will never be overcome by evil.  What greater thought exists?  Love will always win.  And as we reach for the Cross we reach for the greatest power... Compassion, Love.




Lord, we give you our attention today, like we should every moment.  You've got it.  Let the temple curtains tear.  Let the stormy skies rain down.  Your glory and Your fall and Your Love for us is in the rain today.  And let us have forever in our hearts the passion:  the groove that hangs in balance by the nail.