It may seem that after the agony Christ endured in the Garden of Gethsemane, the cruel treatment and mockery He was subjected to by the Roman soldiers, the heartbreak of seeing His own chosen people reject Him utterly and demand His execution, the final act of Crucifixion was something akin to kicking Him while He was down. Christ had just taken literally an infinite amount of suffering upon His shoulders and after all of that He was to be nailed to a cross. Wasn't this just needlessly cruel? Hadn't He already suffered enough by this point? What good could possibly come from the cross? I believe that the cross was, in a strange way, a gift from a Father to a Son to help Him on the final part of His mission. Despite all that He had already suffered, up until that moment on the Hill of Golgotha, Christ's Father had not yet abandoned Him. This would be the hardest part. If ever there was a time for Christ to stumble or falter, this was it. For Christ to be cut off completely from His Father is not something we can fully comprehend. Jesus Christ understood completely the mind and heart and will of His Father. To be severed from the companionship of His Father must have felt like having a huge part of Himself ripped away. It was a loneliness that none of us will hopefully ever have to endure. At this moment of utter distance from His Father Christ was lifted up upon the cross, bringing Him closer physically to His Father even if spiritually and emotionally He was so far away. Although it seems like small comfort, the cross did help Christ draw closer to His Father, even if only by a tiny amount. And when all of His muscles were strained to the breaking point and He would not have been able to stand any longer, the nails of the cross helped Him to stand tall and meet His final test with head held high. At the very edge of need, the harsh mercies of the Cross helped our Savior cross the finish line. The cross held Him up when He was at His very lowest. The cross was an incredibly painful but ultimately indispensable part of Christ's mission and He would not have been able to finish His work without it. We all must take up our own cross if we are to follow the example of our Savior, but what we may not realize is that our cross can and does lift us up and hold us steady as we face the greatest challenges of our lives. I know it can be hard to feel anything like gratitude for the nails being driven into our hands and feet but those nails will help us to stand firm and immovable when we might want to flee in terror. I know that the cross is painful but it is sometimes the only way we can be lifted above failure and defeat.
