Last week was Holy Week, the season when we meditated on the Passion of our Lord as we looked forward to the joy of Resurrection Sunday. At the heart was not the palm branches of Palm Sunday but the wooden tree, the cross. Christians were not called to contemplate the tree as a mere religious relic or sacred object, but as the central point of divine revelation.
The cross is not a glittering symbol adorned with gold or ivory; it is a rough, gnarled wooden tree, cut down from an anonymous trunk in the forests of Judea. In the Roman world, the cross was the ultimate symbol of shame, violence, and utter defeat. Thus, it presents a profound philosophical paradox: How can a death of such disgrace become the path to life? How can an instrument of cruel punishment become the very center of our hope?
From the beginning, sin entered the world through a tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Man stretched out his hand, plucked its fruit, and all humanity fell under the curse. Yet in His marvelous plan of redemption, the Lord God had already ordained that another tree, a wooden cross, would become the means of shattering that curse forever. Read the Full Update
