"Zion, don't hang on the cross!"

So last night our church had a Good Friday service. In the middle of the large lobby, just outside the 2500 seat auditorium, a cross was displayed. The cross was probably about 20 feet long and the span of the crossbeam was probably 10 feet. The top of the cross was propped up about 4 feet so that the whole thing was on an incline. Draped across the central beam was a scarlet silk clothe. This was a power image as it set in the middle of the huge dimly lit room.

Zion, my four year old son, was told that there was a cross and he got excited. "Daddy, there's a CROSS!" he said with as much enthusiasm as he would have had if it were an ice cream cone. "Daddy, let's go see the cross!", he shouted. Everyone in earshot of him in that crowded lobby would have heard his voice. So we went and looked at the cross.

As we were examining it, beginning at the lowest end and working our way to the top, I continued to repeat, "Son, you can touch the cross, but don't pull on the red clothe". Zion is extremely tactile so he's got to touch and experience everything and he's impulsive (I wonder where he gets those qualities from . . . his mother I'm sure).

As we moved to the top of the cross, I looked away for just a second and when I turned back to look at him, Zion was hanging on the top of the cross, his feet dangling off the ground about a half inch. Without thinking I blurted out, "Zion, don't hang on the cross!".

As soon as it came out of my mouth I realized how funny that must have sounded. My son was hanging on the cross.

A Roman executioner's stake is not where you want your son hanging--whether in a church lobby on a Good Friday night or outside the city walls of Jerusalem the night of passover.

Yet that is exactly where God wanted his.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life - John 3:16