Vision Of The Cross

A while back when I was praying this picture came to me that continues to haunt me like a shadow behind all my thoughts and dreams.

I found myself standing before the cross; there was my Savior and friend Jesus. It was like I had always imagined it: Three crosses on top of a small hill with the sun setting in the background. It was eerily calm and quiet; I was overwhelmed with the sense that this is nothing like what really happened. My picture of it was too simple, too nice, too easy to look at and live in.

Then something fell from the heavens and ran over my vision causing everything to run together. The sky darkened, and it was like a painting that was getting wet. Everything wept, everything fell, everything was clouded and chaotic. Except the cross. There in the center was the cross untouched by this movement that was destroying all that I had ever seen. I felt like it was even running over me and that I was being changed by it. 

Then I heard the voice of God; at least it seemed to me to be like the voice of God. He said, “Be still and know that I am God”. Just be still. I couldn’t.

My first reaction was that I could rush forward and save Jesus, he didn’t deserve this and I could stop it. I could run to the cross and fix things, I could somehow put this painting back together. I could bring back the straight lines that now all ran together and were blurred. But he whispered “Kurt what are you thinking, be still, just be still”.

I wanted to run, it was too much. The darkness was becoming overwhelming and I was suffocating in horror of what was dripping in front of me and all over me. Everything was being ruined and undone and I needed to get far away. And he said “Be Still”.

I cried out to him, screaming, crying, cursing. He needed to hear me, I needed to be justified, he needed to know, I had to say it. As I was freaking out, he said, “Be still”.

I looked at the cross. Broken. Afraid. Freaked Out. Anxious. Offended. Humbled. Compelled. What could I do, I had to do something. But his voice continued to speak, “Be still and know that I am God”.

This was God, dying on the cross. He held life and death in his hand and he allowed death to crush him. And all I could do was watch, all he wanted was for me to be there and be still. He wanted me to watch this picture be destroyed as God himself died on the cross and in the scandal and horror of it all to realize that he is God.