We can never get beyond the need to remind ourselves of what the cross means. I believe that God wants the cross to cut deeply like

a sword into the life of every one of us.

So when I speak of the meaning of the cross, I'm speaking of the deep personal meaning

of that

when I was a little child I began to love the hymns about the cross.

I'm sure that many of the hymns about the cross.

I'm sure that many times when people ask me,

what is your favorite hymn, I've said

beneath the cross of Jesus.

It was when I was about 14 years old that I realized that I was lying when I sang that

him because there's a stanza that says I take, cross, thy shadow for my abiding place.

I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of his face.

And I thought, I know a whole lot of kinds of sunshine that I would like,

that I would ask for besides just the sunshine of the face of Jesus.

But I've learned that in these very exalted expressions of spiritual desire that we can't always be honest in saying

them but we can make them a prayer.

And so I sing these hymns, not lying, but just saying, Lord, help me to be able to say this

in honesty, make this real in my life.

But it was many more years, I think, before I thought deeply about the meaning of those

words. And the whole hymn is an attempt to show that the cross, which is a symbol of suffering, and it means torture, doesn't it?

The cross on which Jesus was nailed was the instrument of execution back in Jesus' time.

And I'm sure many of you today are wearing a little gold cross around your neck.

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