I've been spending time in the deep dark pit lately. Life has thrown me some curve balls and I don't understand the reasons, deeper meaning or the potential testimony. When you are in the pit these all sound like cliches. I hate cliches.

In my despair I came across an essay by Joni Erickson Tada. I know that thinking about her situation is supposed to make me feel better about myself. I'm not in a wheelchair. I don't live in constant pain. Et cetera, et cetera. But that wasn't what did it for me. Rather, it was her words and description of Christ on the cross.

She writes, "I learned early on in this wheelchair that God owed me no explanations. He did enough explaining on the cross. He didn't provide me with the words I was looking for at the beginning of my paralysis. Instead, He is the Word. The Word made flesh, hands nearly ripped off, nailed to a cross, vomit, spit, smeared, dried blood, hammering hatred, flies buzzing...I'm so glad Jesus endured a messy death on the cross. I'm so grateful that our God isn't a medicating mystic of a guru who sits on some mountaintop, twiddling his thumbs, but is our Savior who suffered a messy, bloody death that was excruciatingly painful at the hands of vindictive and mean-spirited men."

And so today things are no better than they were yesterday. But I am different. I am clutching a blood stained, roughhewn cross that smells of sweat and the stench of Christ's death. I do as Thomas Bentley suggested and "think on that greater affliction, Christ on the cross." For by thinking on His sacrifice, I take my eyes off myself, my problems, my pain and my despair and see the sacrifice He made just for me. As if I were the only person in all the world.

I too am glad that my God is not a "medicating mystic of a guru" full of mumbo jumbo, Oprahisms and cliches. My God is the God of the universe and He sees me, loves me and knows me by name. My present is not my future and for today that is enough as with all of my might I clutch the cross.