1. The Sign of the Cross
The Sign of the Cross
Can we not trace the sign of the Cross in the first hint of the new spring’s dawning? In many cases, as in the chestnut, before a single leaf has faded, next year’s buds may be seen at the summit of branch and twig, formed into its very stem blood-red.
Back in the plant’s first stages, the crimson touch is to be found in seed-leaves and fresh shoots, and even in hidden sprouts. Look at the acorn, for instance, as it breaks its shell, and see how the baby tree bears its birthmark.
A SIX-YEAR-OLD BOY WROTE TO ME, “My grandmother has a brain tumor. The doctor says she only has six months to live. Can you help me about this?” He enclosed a picture of himself. I held it in my hand and studied the little face—so sweet, so wistful. Could I help him about this?
It was not the first time I had faced such a question. What was I, a jungle missionary, to say to my own child of two when she learned the song “Jesus Loves Me” and wanted to know whether Jesus had loved her daddy too? I gave her the truth: yes. Next question: Then why did He let the Auca Indians kill him? A little girl can be shown that her father’s death is a gateway to life for him, but how was I to explain the truth of the delivering power of death? I could not. But I still had to give an answer, a truthful answer. I did not know all God’s reasons. The ones I was quite sure I did know Valerie could not have understood then. But that He had reasons, I was sure. That they were loving reasons I was also sure. The assurance that it was not for nothing comforted me and I gave my peace to my child.
I had had occasion to ask the same questions when I was small. Our mother and father sang us to sleep with songs like
Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle breast,
There by His love o’ershaded,
Sweetly my soul shall rest. (Fanny J. Crosby)
and:
Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,
Bless Thy little lamb tonight,
Through the darkness be Thou near me,
Keep me safe ‘til morning light. (Mary Duncan)
But then I was greatly frightened by the kidnapping of the famous Charles Lindbergh’s baby. Did Jesus not love him?
A missionary who had been a guest in our home when I was about four had her head chopped off by Chinese Communists when I was eight. I have never forgotten the newspaper picture of her orphaned baby, peeping out of a rice basket carried by the Chinese Christian who had found her. Jesus lets missionaries be killed. Jesus lets babies lose their parents.
Essie McCutcheon was my very lively childhood friend. She had me panting to keep up as she raced through other people’s backyards and alleyways. She stood my hair on end with her imaginative stories—a giant with a match the size of a telephone pole who burned down the house next door, a corpse she found under the back porch. We were the same age, but she was way ahead of me—she would get her baby brother up in the morning, change him, lug him to the kitchen, fix his breakfast and everybody else’s. All that energy and imagination and know-how! When we were both nine years old Essie was very sick in the hospital. Her sisters and parents, my brothers and my parents and I all prayed that the Lord would heal her. He could do that, we knew. But Essie died. Jesus lets children lose their best friends.
Repeatedly throughout our lives we encounter the roadblock of suffering. What do we do with it? Our answer will determine what we can say to another who needs comfort. How was I to reply to the little boy about his grandmother? Should I just give him a few Scripture verses and leave it at that? These, perhaps?
For you, the Lord is a safe retreat;
you have made the Most High your refuge.
No disaster shall befall you,
no calamity shall come upon your home. (Ps 91:9-10)
I know of no answer to give to anyone except the answer given to all the world in the cross. It was there that the great Grain of Wheat died—not that death should be the end of the story, but that it should be the beginning of the story, as it is in all the cycles of nature. The grain dies. The harvest results. The sun must die in the west if it is to rise in the east. The crimson touch must be found even in the fresh shoots of the baby oak—they are destined for death.
So in the early springtime of his life my young correspondent must begin to trace the sign of the cross. Of course I could not unfold to him all that I have learned through the parables of plant life (and how much more there is that I have yet to learn!). It is a long road to understanding the love of God in and through our own suffering, but I could take that little boy to the proof of Jesus’ love, the cross, which towers over all the “wrecks of time,” stands stark and irrefutable against all the tragedy of the world. I could tell him that Jesus really does love his grandmother and loves him. He could be absolutely sure about that because Jesus had died for them.
I can still hear Essie singing her favorite chorus:
Everybody ought to love Jesus, Jesus, Jesus—
He died on the cross to save us from sin.
Everybody ought to love Jesus.
The song had a logical idea and a bouncy tune. But suffering takes us far below tunes and logic. Who of us has not known the confusion, the ambivalence, the restlessness of pain? The soul is a kingdom divided against itself. Job cried out in anguish from his ash heap. Israel complained against the Lord and blamed Moses. Moses brought their complaints and quite a few of his own to the Lord—why, why, why? Our Lord Jesus Himself wrestled with His will (“If it is possible … If it is not possible … not my will but Thine be done”).
I think I must have asked Jesus to be my Savior at a very early age. It would have been natural to do so, given the godly training I had. I have no recollection of not being a Christian. But when I was ten years old I heard a sermon on the words, “You must be born again.” Had I been? Not certain, I stood when the invitation was given to declare publicly that I wanted to be. Two or three years later I learned that Jesus must be not only Savior but Lord. I wanted that too, and prayed a prayer of commitment written by Betty Scott Stam, the missionary who had been beheaded, surrendering all my plans, purposes, desires, and hopes, myself, my life, my all, to God to be His forever. I asked Him to work out His whole will in my life, at any cost.
In the decisions made at ten or twelve I did not clearly see the life-out-of-death principle. Of course I didn’t. As someone has written, death is the only way out of any world in which we are. The newborn baby dies a death to the safe, warm life of the womb. The reborn Christian forsakes the old life, “dies” to it, and receives the life of Christ in its place. The surrender of one’s will—what could be more certainly a death? But it is the condition of receiving God’s will, God’s life, God’s joy.
There is no question in my mind that God pays attention to such prayers, even if they are prayed by a child. Never mind that we do not know what we are asking. He knows. He knows our frame, too, and remembers that we are dust, so He leads us tenderly and carefully along the pathway we have chosen, which is the way of the cross.
When I was fourteen or so I began to think seriously about the words to one of my favorite hymns, “Beneath the cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand.” What, exactly, did that mean? Was I willing to accept only the sunshine of Christ’s face (when I could think of all kinds of “sunshine” I hoped for), to “know no gain or loss” (I had several ambitions)? I wanted to be willing. It was going to take some learning.
In college I learned to love Lucy A. Bennett’s hymn, “O teach me what it meaneth, that cross uplifted high” (Hymns, Inter-Varsity Press, Chicago 1969). Would God not begin to do just that if I asked Him to?
He began. The first place the cross touched me in a way that cut deeply was in my heart’s desire for marriage. I fell in love with a man in college who had believed that God wanted him to remain single, perhaps for life, but at least until he had had experience in jungle missionary work. Here was my chance to learn what death was about—death to myself—and to take up the cross, that is, willingly to accept the will of God which went so strongly against the grain of my own. It was not easy. Jesus never suggested that it should be. Amy Carmichael’s poem helped me to be specific:
Lord Crucified, O mark Thy holy Cross
On motive, preference, all fond desires,
On that which self in any form inspires,
Set Thou that sign of loss.
And when the touch of death is here and there
Laid on a thing most precious in our eyes,
Let us not wonder, let us recognize
The answer to this prayer. (Toward Jerusalem
Christian Literature Crusade
Ft. Washington, PA 1988, p. 96)
The cross means suffering. Suffering’s meaning is to be learned through the cross.