Yesterday's sermon was about the mystery and meaning of the cross in each of our lives as well as in the Christian narrative. Josh, who was preaching, quoted Martin Luther: "Lack of understanding is real understanding; not knowing where you are going is really knowing where you are going...Behold, that is the way of the cross. You cannot find it, but I must lead you like a blind person."
I smiled to myself and thought that the hardest lesson motherhood taught me, the one I fought the longest, is maybe the best: Obedience.
Then Josh paraphrased something Karl Barth wrote: that when we are personally on the cross, we see God, and...there is no god behind that God.
I heard those words, and I remembered the closest thing to a cross I've experienced in my life so far; the weeks and months in the hospital when I didn't know whether my daughter would live or die. I didn't know whether he was going to answer my prayers, but I knew he was there, and I knew (terrifyingly) that there was nothing behind him. And even though the cross is supposedly the anti-sales pitch, the dealbreaker that sends everyone rushing to the exit, I think those days and nights in the hospital must have been when I started to believe.
Image: Frank Brangwyn etching from Sacred Art Pilgrim.
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