The Cross of Christ

I just started reading a new book and have already been challenged by the first chapter. I am trying to expand my reading library to include a wider range of authors and eras. Limiting resources only shelters our point of view and hinders thinking for ourselves. I don’t want to become comfortable and mindless in my reading. I want and need to be continuously growing, all the while holding on to the absolute timeless truth of God. In this effort my new venture is a book by Charles R. Swindoll, Strengthening Your Grip. I came across a poem that I wanted to share:

I simply argue that the cross he raised again
at the center of the market place
as well as on the steeple of the church,

I am recovering the claim that
Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral
between two candles:

But on a cross between two thieves;
on a town garbage heap;
At a crossroad of politics so cosmopolitan
that they had to write His title
in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek…

And at the kind of place where cynics talk smut,
and thieves curse and soldiers gamble.

Because that is where he died,
and that is what he died about.
and that is where Christ’s men ought to be,
and what church people ought to be about.

-George MacLeod