Day 37: But why the cross?

I hate that the cross is part of the story.  I just want to skip from palm Sunday to Easter and miss holy week all together.  Why didn't God choose a different way?

I'm tired.  I'm ready to be done with Lent.  I'm ready to drink a diet coke and let my kids binge on video games. Why do I have to be a little sick with a sick baby and bumble through holy week.  Why can't Easter just come?

Phone calls with friends and family. Heart ache.  Hardship.  Hard choices. Why do we still live in a broken world? Why didn't Jesus just fix it all?

News stories.  Division.  War.  Tragedy.  Anger. 

We are just as broken now as we were then.  We just have more technology.

Jesus rode into Jerusalem knowing the path he was on.  Knowing the disciples wouldn't understand or even stand by him.  Knowing that the day would end looking like darkness has won.  

We use symbols like butterflies and lambs and eggs to represent life after death.  A dying of self to be torn apart and rearranged.  I think this symbols are apt.  But I think the cross is more.  It is a willingness to face hell.  The darkest of dark.  The deepest of fallen states.  To go to the most redeemed places and break them. 

God loves us in our darkness. God has visited our very darkest places just to be with us in it.  Just to redeem us from it.  

I think about the darkness crowding in around me this week.  All the sorrowful situations and I know God is present in it, deeply. 

I don't understand the mystery of the cross but I do know it's power.  There is no place we can go where God cannot,  will not go with us.