Through Blood and Shame

At my church’s Good Friday service, they handed out twenty-eight penny nails for us to hold as we prayed, sang, and meditated on Jesus’ death on the cross.

As I held the cold metal in my hands until it warmed, I gripped it to feel the unbendable hardness. Poked the point against the inside of my wrist. Twisted it every conceivable way as a tactile connection to the Cross.

 

And I discovered how easily it slipped into the position of a pencil in my fingers.

 

It fascinated me.

For surely the nails wrote a message that day.

Before, at many other executions, they had written messages of despair and defeat, of agony and shame. But underneath all they usually said was a very quiet message that no one could see that day.

“Nothing is stronger than the King’s love.”

Love that will carry an undeserved cross. Love that will willingly stretch out upon it. Love that will scream in anguish, hang for hours gasping for breath, and still not back down from doing what must be done.

 

Even though many of the beneficiaries of this sacrifice will reject it.

 

It’s not a proud strength. Not showy, not even obvious. The Man was killed brutally, after all.

 

Yet a love that could walk steadily forward through blood and shame and pain to death, for the sake of the one beloved, cannot be anything but strong.

 

And that is the same love that holds me two millennia later. Me, Darcy Fornier, insignificant though I am by so many of my culture’s standards. That unconquerable love holds me.

 

I’m still meditating on it almost two weeks later. Because I need to know deep in my soul that if Jesus did THAT for me, I can trust Him with anything I face today.

 

May His powerful love enwrap us, my friends, and strengthen us to live this life well.

 

-Miss Darcy

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