I am having one of those moments when one looks back on a given experience, and my own response is to smile. Life has a way of teaching us significant things through our day to day experiences - if we stop to reflect on it. I want to take this further and say, God has a way of using all of life to increase our awareness of who we are, who others are or who He really is.
Darkness has a way of reducing our level of awareness. The other night, as I was searching for a piece of sound equipment, I saw the need to walk further into a corner that was very dark. As I held my cell phone to take advantage of the flashlight feature, I took one more step and bam!!! I hit something with the right side of my forehead. I came to realize after a few seconds that I had run into a cross - a human sized cross that was made out of some rugged, hard kind of wood. I reached to feel the spot on my forehead and felt a bit of blood. I could not believe it; I thought to myself, "I just ran into the cross." After a moment of reflection, it was as if God was whispering something softly into my soul. The message was simple: "Diego, it is better to come under the cross than to run into it." I pondered on this thought and realized how living in darkness often causes me and others to run into the cross (or stumble upon it) instead of living under the benefits of the cross. Ultimately speaking, the cross represents the One who is able to both bless (1 Peter2:24) or crush (Luke 20:17-18) anyone depending on that person's relationship to the One represented by the cross. Jesus is the One who is embodied in the cross. He is the One with both authority and power to deal with each human being according to their relationship to Him. If the relationship is characterized by rejection of the cross, the outcome is eternally fatal. On the other hand, if the relationship is a humble posture to come under the benefits of the One who sacrificed it all to reconcile us to God the Father, the gains are glorious and infinitely unending!
Are you running into the cross or are you coming under it? Is your life at present characterized by darkness or are you allowing the light of the cross to bring its transforming light and power over you?
My little bleeding wound on my forehead accomplished little that night; the blood Jesus shed on the cross is given for our real healing if we come under it: "He himself bore our sins” in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by His wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24).
Diego Cuartas