| 1 Peter 2:24 – “ and He Himself brought our sins in His body up on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness; by His wounds you were healed. .” |
When I was a boy, I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Back then, Santa Fe was steeped in Roman Catholic tradition. Crucifixes were everywhere.
You’d see one hanging in the office of the gas station where you paid for your fuel. People mounted them outside their homes, like a quiet declaration of faith. And at the elementary school I attended—just across from a towering Catholic church—there was a crucifix front and center. I remember gazing at it from the classroom window, lost in thought as little boys often are.
The cross, of course, is nothing new. In the Roman world, it was a common sight—and a feared one. A generation before Jesus was born, a rebellion rose up against Rome. The emperor responded with ruthless clarity: he crucified about 6,000 rebels and lined the Appian Way with their bodies, sending a clear, gruesome message to anyone else who might think to rise up. Crosses weren’t symbols of faith back then—they were warnings written in wood and blood.
So, you can imagine my surprise when our family moved to Texas. There, the cross—something I had only associated with the Catholic imagery of my childhood—was suddenly everywhere again. But this time, it wasn’t looming over churches or hanging outside gas stations. It was dangling around the necks of children, polished and pretty, worn as jewelry.
That moment stuck with me. Because even now, we come back to the cross again and again—especially on Sundays during the Lord’s Supper, or as Easter approaches. We describe its terror, its cruelty, its cost. And rightly so. But I wonder… is that all?
Is there something more?
Fred Craddock, a preacher whose words often reach deeper than most, once tried to explain the meaning of the cross in a way that has stayed with me. He told this story:
Sometimes a child falls and skins a knee or an elbow, and runs crying to their mother. The mother picks up the child and says—in what must be the oldest myth in the world—“Let me kiss it and make it better,” as if her kiss had magic in it.
She scoops the child into her lap, kisses the wound, and holds them close. Did her kiss heal it? Of course not. It was those few minutes in her lap—wrapped in warmth, in comfort, in love.
The child looks up and sees tears in the mother’s eyes and says, “Why are you crying, Mom? I’m the one who got hurt.”
“Because you’re hurt,” she says, “and when you hurt, I hurt.”
That does more than all the bandages and medicine in the world.
And then Craddock said this:
“What is the cross? Can I say it this way? It is to sit for a few minutes on the lap of God, who hurts because you hurt.”
That changes things, doesn’t it?
The cross is not just a symbol of terror or sacrifice. It’s the place where God pulls us close. Where love holds us tight. Where the deepest pain is met with the deepest compassion.
So today, whatever you’re carrying, don’t forget this:
The cross is not just about what Jesus suffered—
It’s about how deeply you are loved.
Let that truth cradle you. Let it calm your fears.
And remember the power of the cross in your life today.
–Robert G. Taylor
robertgtaylor.com
