Cross Making

Each year leading up to the celebration of Easter I try to focus my attention more fully on Christ and all that He has done for me. One of the things I have chosen to do in preparation for this Easter is to make crosses. The idea evolved from several sources. There are many blogs and websites that promote doing something every day. One friend posts a picture of an art project that she completes each day. Another blog I visit frequently features a different drawing each day. One of the Zentangle blogs features a weekly challenge using Zentangles.  A while back I purchased a book, Making Crosses, by Ellen Morris Prewitt. Prewitt uses found objects and scraps to create crosses as a way to express her relationship with God. In her book she offers a daily exercise to be used in making a cross.

I will use her book loosely to make a cross every day until Easter. Instead of using found objects I will be inspired by whatever aspect of God or Christ I am focused on for a particular day or by the direction the Spirit leads.

The first reading in Prewitts book is about God's love for us. I was uninspired by the writing prompt given. The idea would be to write something based on the prompt and then either pray or meditate on that aspect, in this instance - God's love, while making a cross. While trying to think about a moment when I experienced God's love in a profound way my mind wandered to something I recently read about God and joy. This came from The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard:

"We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness".

Wow! While it seemed a new and surprising view of God, it immediately rang true. Willard went on to describe a time when he was taken to a beach in South Africa. Apparently South African beaches are beyond other beaches in beauty, Willard described it this way, "Words cannot capture the view that confronted me. I saw space and light and texture and color and power...that seemed hardly of this earth."  Willard, I believe, experienced great joy at this sight and he began to realize that God sees such sights and more, sights beyond our galaxy that must constantly bring Him great joy: "I had some sense of what an infinitely joyous consciousness he is and of what it might have meant for him to look at his creation and find it 'very good'."

This was a completely new way for me to think about God and a wonderful insight. One more quote from Willard and I will come full circle to the making of the first cross of the Lenten season. "We are enraptured by a well-done movie sequence or by a few bars from an opera or lines from a poem.We treasure our great experiences for a lifetime, and we may have very few of them. But he is simply one great inexhaustible and eternal experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right. This is what we must think of when we hear theologians and philosophers speak of him as a perfect being. This is his life."  

I immediately thought of the time I sat in a darkened and comfortable movie theater surrounded by my family. We were watching "The King's Speech". At one point, and I do not remember exactly which one, tears came to my eyes and I feared I would actually cry, not because the movie was sad but because it was so well done, so well written, so well acted. I had not seen anything of that quality in a long time and I was grateful to God for it.

I wanted to focus today, in prayer and in cross-making on God's infinite joy and the brief glimpses we get of who He really is. He is always there for us to "see" but comprehending, really understanding His character and nature is another thing entirely.

Cross # 1 using words from "The King's Speech"

I chose to make my cross from the words of the speech delivered in the movie (and in history) by King George VI. It represents a joyous moment in my own life that drew me closer to my understanding of the God who makes all joyous things possible. There have been, of course, many other joys and greater joys for me (meeting Dean, birth of children!!, amazing sunsets, great runs, beautiful hikes); however this was the very particular joy that came to mind today.

I believe there are 46 days until Easter. I don't know if I will post each cross or just the ones I like the most! Time will tell. I do hope that this journey in cross making will lead me into a closer relationship with God, into greater understanding of the sacrifice Christ made for me and will allow me to dwell longer beneath the shadow of His wings.