27 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. 30 Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die. 

Since this is Holy Week I thought I’d center our devotional thoughts around the passion of Jesus on the cross. 

 Chuck Colson in his book "Loving God", tells the story of Russian Nobel Peace prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn who was imprisoned many years in the gulag of Siberia. After suffering a long time in the work camp, he fell into despair. On a particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much. He saw no reason to continue living, to continue fighting the system. He thought that the rest of his life was meaningless since he would most likely die in this Siberian prison. So, he gave up. 

Laying his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude work-site bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to many others. 

 As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly, he lifted his eyes and saw a skinny, old prisoner squat down next to him. The man said nothing. Instead, he drew a stick through the ground at Solzhenitsyn’s feet, tracing the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

 As Solzhenitsyn stared at the sign of the Cross, his entire perspective changed. He knew that he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet in that moment, he knew that there was something greater than the evil that he saw in the prison, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that the hope of all mankind was represented in that simple Cross and through the power of the Cross, anything was possible. 

Solzhenitsyn slowly got up, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Nothing outwardly had changed, but inside he received hope. 

Whenever you see a Cross, what do you think of? In ancient times, people would have thought about pain, suffering, and death. The Cross was a sign of the worst torture one could suffer. It was a cursed sign and yet, when Jesus willingly accepted the Cross, when He willingly accepted to die a criminal’s death, when He willingly accepted to be ridiculed, hated, and killed, He changed the Cross from a symbol of death and despair into a symbol of life and hope. 

The symbol of the cross has been used throughout the world for centuries to designate followers of Jesus Christ and Christian Churches. If there is any one symbol that is so popularly recognized it would be the cross. Many people wear it on a necklace. Many will wear crosses as earrings or lapel buttons. Most churches have them. The cross is central to the reasons Jesus came to earth. 

In John 12:32 Jesus says, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself." That is a powerful statement. The cross becomes the symbol of Christ’s death for our sin.