This is an excerpt from an Ann Voskamp writing. It is relevant AND thought provoking and I wanted to share it. Only three days later, people go around with these crosses right on their foreheads.It’s only three days after the world found out that The 21 died for being The People of the Cross, three days after that incomprehensible video stated they were “chopping off the heads of those that have been carrying the cross illusion in their heads” —-that people all around the world wear these sooty crosses right there on their faces, right above their eyes. Right there on their heads, the shaping of their minds.Like they want to be known and marked and counted as one of those. One of His.
There are these sooty crosses smudged on countless foreheads and that’s what is murmured like a brave and honest refrain around the world today, words from our Genesis beginning:Dust you are and to dust you will return. Dust. Humanity was formed of dust and our human bodies will return to dust.
Three days later people wear it like a like a courageous confession of reality: For all our beautiful bluster — we are just beautiful dust. And if I’m only dust — just my love will not be enough.If love is all we need — I’ve got a problem.Because, honest? Our love isn’t enough to absorb the evil that decapitates men’s heads, evil that rapes little girls, evil that steals and sells children as sex slaves.
There’s real active evil that’s not simply people acting — there’s real evil that’s more than a social construct, that’s more than someone’s bad choices, that’s not from any heart in this world, that’s not from any place in this world, that’s not from any mind in this world — there’s a supernatural evil that slithers into the corners of this world and pythons around hearts and minds until it strangles out the light and we scream against the dark.
At some point — your Love runs out, and You need a Love larger than your own to Love Larger than evil. The only Love that can crush undeniable evil is the undeniable love of the Cross. When you’re just dust — your love alone will not be enough.Super evil can only be absorbed by a supernatural kind of Love.
The kind of love that sings Kumbayah can’t shake a swaying candle at this kind of otherworldly evil — only an otherworldly Love that lets the hammer ring and took on the iron of the nails, that bore the weight of the world on that Cross, can torch straight through the hellish dark of this kind of evil.
Sometimes your heart can’t love— which is exactly why Jesus offers you His.
He offers. For God so loved the world. Everybody’s given the offer, the invitation. Absolutely every single person is invited in, everybody’s invited in.
Our love will eventually fail and leave somebody out — but Cross love never fails to take all the willing in. His Love has no boundaries — and then He binds all the beloved to Him, to shape them to be like Him. And He knows the only way for your love to be transformed to be like His — is for Him to give you a heart transplant. For Him to give you His heart.
When you don’t think you can forget the evil that’s been done —When you don’t think you can forgive the evil that’s been said —When it’s His supernatural heart beating in you — it lets you supernaturally love in a heart beat. Those 21 men didn’t die for Kumbayah love — they died for the love they found on a Cross.
If evil — not people acting, but real active evil — is out to behead us, then Kumbayah love will never be enough — only Cross Love that willing offers itself for us as a Living Ransom will rescue us.
Because don’t ever be fooled: Cross Love that lays itself down is the only power that can lay the sharp edge of an axe right into evil’s head. It comes back to me a thousand times – how a missionary told of this snake— a snake longer than a man—that slithered its way right through their front door and straight to the kitchen.And the woman had flung outside screaming and a machete-wielding neighbor had calmly walked into her kitchen and he sliced off the head of the reptilian thing. But a snake’s neurology and blood flow make it such that it slithers wild even after it’s been sliced headless.For hours the missionary stood outside.
And the body of the snake rampaged on, thrashing hard against windows and walls, destroying chairs and table and all things home and good.A snake may wreak havoc — but it has no head. It’s really dead. Evil can go around beheading — but it’s the thing that has no head. Even if the tail still rampages, the snake’s head is crushed.
Only the undeniable love of the Cross can crush undeniable evil. Maybe now is the time that there will be countless thousands of us who we will bend our knees at the great shores of history and let ourselves be counted as The People of the Cross.On an Ash Wednesday, The People of the Cross repent of wanting to be greatly known for anything other than for loving greatly.
On an Ash Wednesday, the People of the Cross repent of a love and life that does anything less than “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.”
The People of the Cross repent of not daily, relentlessly, extravagantly loving our neighbour next door though we keep saying we want to change the world, repent of hating, avoiding, and dreading suffering though we say we want to be found worthy to suffer for the cross of Christ.
The People of the Cross repent of not dying to dead things so there can be resurrection in us of real things,
On an Ash Wednesday, it’s happening in quiet, unseen places and churches and cubicles, this quiet bending of the knee in a thousand places today, a bending with The 21, and these murmured prayers of The People of the Cross:
God, forgive us for our lack of prayer, because the very root of our lack of growth is almost always a lack of prayer.
Forgive us for more interest in the paparazzi, motion pictures & famous personalities and People Magazine than in praying for The Persecuted Church.
Forgive us for our lavish church building plans, instead of our plans to love lavishly as a church, forgive us for not serving the outcast but serving the outcast notice to go further away...
Forgive us for not loving our enemies otherwise known as our brothers -- and for turning those who were known as our brothers into our enemies and forgive us for wanting safe lives of comfort instead of living dangerous lives of love that speak of the comfort found in You.
On an Ash Wednesday, The People of the Cross just get down on their knees and say it through cracks in their broken hearts:
There’s a love that murmurs on a thousand lips of The People of The Cross:
May The 21 who actually died for their faith, compel countless thousands of us to actually live
Maybe three days after, there’s a whole lot of us longing for a 40-Day journey through into something more — more than we ever have before. Maybe because the world feels more like a strange wilderness that it ever has before. Libya. Iraq. Paris. Denmark. Here.
The last seven days of global news may have CNN headlining, rightly or wrongly, as “Religion’s Week from Hell” — but the People of the Cross can look away from the headlines long enough to know:
What if 40 Days we looked to the Cross — so we might become Cross Love in a world caught in the cross hairs of war and heartache and pain?
What if we, for 40 Days, what if The People of the Cross looked to the Cross and prayed 1 Samuel 7:3 at 7:03? "If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods...and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out..."
And what if for the next 40 days we prayed repentance and redemption and revival and for The Persecuted Church and for the Church that is us, praying every morning and said our Amen with 2 Chronicles 7:14 : "If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
What if we really committed to that kind of prayer for the next 40 days at 7:03? ... till 7:14?
What if the next 40 days is asking The People of the Cross to do more than Give Up something — but to Take Back something? Take Back taking up our Cross-Take Back our time so we can turn back to our First Love,
Take Back our hypocrisy and our complacency and our apathy and Love Lavishly,
Take Back our excuses for not committing to Give Back every day in some tangible, real way — to the local food bank, to a woman’s shelter, to the refugees and the foreigners and the Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and to the forgotten neighbour next door with her meowing stray cat.
Maybe now is the time — Now is the time to Take Back what it means to humbly and genuinely live the love of The People of the Cross.
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