Hanging Under The Cross

In First Grade, I was introduced to God centered knowledge. Growing up Catholic, Nuns taught me that all learning, and life, is about God’s hands putting blank sheets of paper into our hands.   In return, our hands are lovingly challenged to write God’s story for our individual life.   Be it Math, Science, English or History, it is God who centers the story, and we are to write it according to His purpose and glory – even if we don’t like the subject or story line!!!

     As a reminder that it was all for God’s glory, and not my own honor, every single sheet of paper I ever wrote on had to first be dedicated to God.   I was in college before I ever wrote on a sheet of paper that the first mark on it was not the Cross on its center top.   That Cross on the top of every single sheet of my pre-college education instilled in me the reality, and wisdom, that every ounce of my lifelong learning has to hang under the Cross Jesus took up for my salvation.   Only then can I do God’s chosen will for my life.

     Those Nuns also told me that no matter how smart I might become, God wouldn’t always give me A’s.   There’d be some lessons where the grade would be a far cry from an A.   However, if my work hung under the Cross, done for God and with God, then the mark would always hold God’s love and direction.   It would, also, hold the forever reminder I was to follow and seek God’s way and approval, not the world’s.  Many times, what I, or the world, might see as a great big “F”ailure, God would view as a strong seed of “F”aith.

     Sixty-five years later, my denomination has changed a few times, but my first grade Nun dogma remains a denominator of my life.   Some days, weeks, and even years are easy to hang under the Cross.   Others are almost impossible to so do.   It’s easy to forget that God doesn’t ask, or expect, us to bring only our good, better and best days, and ways, to the Cross.   His love and forgiveness waits with open arms to absolve all we repentantly hang under Christ’s Cross.

     The Cross of Christ was staked on top of a mountain He first had to climb.   What God asks of us is much easier.   Whether successfully climbed or not, we are to hang our mountains under the Cross.   Christ’s crucifixion has already secured for us absolution and freedom from our sins.   Then with renewed hope, the faith of Philippians 4:13 becomes our anchor in both the days of SONshine and nights of storms that await us.   “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)     

Nothing less than perfect I, or you, do is unworthy or unaccepted by God, if it hangs remorsefully under Christ’s Cross.   Everything good I, or you, achieve only has value and purpose if hung under the Cross and centered in Colossians 3:17.   “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”