Friday 5 April 2013

The Lord of all things

It's quite fitting that not only the calendar (welcome to Anno Domini 2013, the year of Our Lord, 2013), but even language itself should reflect the facts (whether our present age likes them or not) of Christ's supremacy, both in his sufferings and in his glory. It's fitting, because he is, in fact, supreme.

Someone may ask, "What is the crux of the matter?". And the word "crux" is Latin for cross; because the cross of Jesus is the central event of all human history. It's "crucial"; which means that it's like the cross. We speak of the worst pain as excrutiating - from the same Latin root, meaning literally that something is "like the (sufferings of the) cross". When we enter the time of deep testing, we enter the crucible - the place like the cross, where Jesus entered the greatest of all contests, with sin and death themselves. The man full of zeal for his particular cause is a "crusader" - because there's nothing better to be taken up with than the cross of Jesus.

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