Week 16—Monday 2 Corinthians 8:8-9
Week 16—MONDAY
THE CROSS EVERYWHERE
Yesterday we quoted Joseph M. Plunkett’s “I See His Blood Upon the Rose,” and I see Jesus’ blood everywhere. The Africans have a greeting, “Are you well?” And the other replies, “I am if you are.” This simple and beautiful greeting touches deep cords within us, for it reminds us of him “who bore our sickness”—he is well if we are, but he is sick in our sickness and sinful in our sin—his by identification with us.
A missionary woman was giving an examination to an Indian Bible student. She was asked to tell what she knew about the crucifixion of Jesus. She started in, and soon she forgot about this being an examination, and, as she described the cross where her dear Lord died, she burst into tears, threw her arms around the missionary’s neck, and soon they were rocking in each other’s arms weeping together at the foot of the cross. This was no examination—it was redemption; reality took over from formality.
It is a far cry from that scene to another: Dr. Radhakrishnan, President of India and a leading philosopher of India, was speaking in the Mormon Temple in Utah on “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” He said, in essence, that we are not merely to remember the cross, we are to realize the cross. We are to be there—going through ourselves what he went through, identifying ourselves with him in his sufferings. The philosopher went back past the words of philosophy to the Word of Suffering made flesh.
The leading Christian of India, when he was a Brahmin student, heard the gospel of the cross for the first time and said to himself, “If that isn’t true, it ought to be true.”
O Jesus, Revealer of the Heart of God and revealer of the purpose and goal of creation, we turn to you to find something of your spirit. For if your Spirit is within us, we are in line with the meaning of the universe—its very key. Teach us your cross. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall find a situation today in which I will take it on myself to save another.