The Death of Christopher Dryden: Crosswords at the Crossroads

Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. (Luke 23:46)

Jesus says quite a bit on the cross.  It’s not a sermon altogether, but when you read Luke, Matthew and John gives a lot of Jesus in the final painful moments before ‘He breathed his last’.

I was reflecting on that as I considered something about this day’s ‘devotion’.  I was looking at the Tramaine Hawkins song What Should I Do as I was pondering with God what steps I should take and moves to make and that kind of palaver.  Wrestling with issues and questions of movement and the like I came to an interesting point of death.

So much of life can be wrapped up in my own concerns, my own desires, my own issues, what I want, what affects me, what makes me happy, comfortable or content.  So much external factors going on in answering that question that I hardly stop to consider the eternal perspective.  Thank God for death.  For in death I am reminded of Jesus and the exchange that takes place when I gain life in all its fullness.  That exchange only takes place at the death of Christopher Dryden.

Also considering issues of being fruitful and its connection to death, I only came about as a child of God because Jesus said that unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it doesn’t bear fruit, but if it does then it produces quite a lot.  Death is thus necessary to reap the harvest of eternal life.  My death for His life, even as He died to give me life.

Now I am faced with that challenge which some bright spark put in a children’s song that is actually a hugely serious aspect of the Christian commitment that Jesus also reiterates in Luke 9 – if any man come after me let him deny himself and follow me.  That again calls for the death of Christopher Dryden to live the life of Jesus Christ.

Bringing me back to the final recorded words of Jesus on the cross according to Luke.  When it came to the pivotal moment in history after Jesus had already wrangled over the issue at Gethsemane and has now resolved to follow the will of His Father it’s intriguing to read these final words.  He is giving Himself over to His Father finally and once that is done the world will never be the same again.  The glory of the resurrection, the joy of the victory over the grave, sin and death itself only comes about because the lamb of God who takes the sin of the world is now slain.  He is now slain, and in so doing He commits Himself, His last to His Father.

What I got from that, and how it helps me in terms of guidance for crucial decisions in the crossroads of life is simply this.  God kicks in at the end of myself.  For all the great miracles, teaching and preaching, it was all leading to this moment, where Jesus literally came to the end of Himself, and when He came to the end of Himself God was most glorified.  Jesus to a large extent in taking on the form of a servant, denied Himself to the point of the cross because of the joy that awaited Him and on committing Himself back to God sealed the deal on all that was to take place and God’s triumphant exclamation of His love is sounded here – not from the resurrection, but from here.

From here resounds God’s eternal message of redemption for restoration and the resurrection, which should never be undervalued, is that confirmation that the victory claimed at the cross defeats all and now the sin has been taken right relationship is restored for all those willing to go through the process of acknowledging the act and then choosing to follow the Way.

So for me when I get to the end of myself, when I commit my spirit to God in denying myself, in carrying the cross that symbolises the death of the man Christopher Dryden for the resurrected life of Christ in me then even dead situations can come to life.  When that takes place and I come to the end of myself then God leads through the valley to the mountaintop and across the plains of life everlasting.  Only in remembering these crosswords at the various crossroads of life.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd