The Cross.

Today, I hurt my hand. I was getting dressed, and I threw my hand out real quick and wacked it on the corner of my open drawer. It hurt. I looked at it, it wasn’t bleeding hardly at all but I definitely got a little gash smack dab in the middle of my hand. Within seconds of hitting it, I started feeling incredibly nauseous and lightheaded, I wandered out of my closet to sit on the side of the bathtub. My body felt extremely hot, then I started sweating like crazy and my arms and legs felt really cold, and my breaths were more labored. Everything felt kinda slow motion. I was certain I was about to either throw up everywhere or pass out, or both, so I called my roommate in to the bathroom. After a few minutes of sitting and drinking some water I started to feel normal again, so I got back up and got ready for the day. My hand still hurts a little bit, but it’s mainly just an inconvenient place to get injured. I was really weirded out by how my body responded, so I asked my nursing professor. She said that it sounded like my body went into fight-or-flight mode as soon as I hit the nerve in my palm. Fight-or-flight, how wonderful that our bodies can respond to danger, but my goodness was it a miserable feeling. I felt awful. Don’t worry, there is a purpose to me telling you this story, I’ll get back to it.

The Lord has been teaching me alot about the depths of my pride and the definite need for humility. I’ve been reading this book called, Humility(go figure) by CJ Mahaney. Something in the section I read today really stuck out to me. He was talking about daily disciplines that help him walk out in humility. And he quoted John Stott as saying,  “Everytime we look at the cross Christ seems to be saying to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especialy in self-righteousness, until we have visted a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.” This really caused me to think of the cross for what it actually was. The only man in history who knew no sin, and loved in a way we can hardly imagine, suffered one of the cruelest and most brutal deaths imaginable because of me. My mistakes. My disobedience. My pride. My unholiness. My unworthiness. As I thought on this and pondered the reality of His sacrifice I thought about the cut on my palm, right where a nail went into His. I thought of the misery of having my body respond to that nerve being hit this morning, and was overwhelmed with how much more violently it must have responded to a nail being driven through it. The torment and pain Christ suffered, so I may walk in the freedom I all too often toss aside for this world’s captivity, is really unimaginable. Tonight I am shrinking to my true size, at the foot of his rugged cross, and somehow He’s looks at me and says, “it was all worth it.”  Amazing.