The Cross

This painting is the second in an Easter series of 3 that I called ‘Death is not the end’. This series takes three different symbols of Jesus’ death as black silhouettes and contrasts them with backgrounds full of colour, movement and life. My aim is to express something of the truth of Easter - that death isn’t the end, that resurrection and life follows it.

The cross is central to the Christian faith, for it is how Jesus died. We get so used to seeing this symbol that we often forget what a horrific thing it was. Here’s a quote from my prayer journal written in 2004.

The cross, a horrific place. A place of immense pain, not pain that is over in a second, but an enduring pain of the worst sort. The banging of metal upon metal as the nails go in, screams with each nail going in deeper and deeper, pain getting greater and greater. Blood staining every surface. And then silence. The banging stops, a chance to catch a breath, though the pain doesn’t subside. Then they hoist you onto the cross itself. More banging, and you fight for every breath. Indescribable pain. Then there’s the taunts, the humiliation you feel. And yet you still manage a conversation of love and mercy while dying there, in immense pain.

Jesus’ death on the cross was a demonstration of God’s love for us. It can be difficult to imagine what it must have been like, and then even harder to accept that he endured that suffering and death for us. But through it we find forgiveness and love. In dying, Jesus (who is God), put himself in our place - a place of death, of separation from God, the ultimate consequence of our failures and wrongdoing. But he did this so that we might be forgiven for those failures and wrongdoings, and that ultimately we can be restored into a loving relationship with God. Death is not the end, for resurrection (and eternal life with God) was (and still is for us) to come.