This song came to mind after I had chosen all the songs for this coming Sunday's worship service, and it was a much better fit musically and lyrically than what I had chosen earlier for a song to remember Jesus' work on the cross. It contains several verses from the hymn "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" and adds a chorus. Later today, I was reading the last two chapters of the gospel of Luke and some different verses jumped out at me that seemed to coincide with the lyrics from this song. One was in Chapter 24, verses 38 and 39 where Jesus says "Why are these doubts welling up inside you? Look at my hands and feet..." Is the reality of Christ's work on the cross powerful enough in our lives to crush the doubts we have about whether He really exists at all, whether He is who He said He is, or whether He truly is the only way, truth and life? As people that claim to follow Him, have we done like this song says and come and die to ourselves and to the ways of this world and let Him put His life in us to live for His Kingdom instead?
The other thing that this song brought to mind today was the fact that sometimes I have a hard time with the chorus. It keeps singing "Oh the wonderful Cross," and in the back of my mind it reminds me of how the cross as a symbol is often an idol in this world. Plenty of people that don't believe in Jesus wear it around their necks, and often times an image of the cross is treated with some sort of great power. But the truth is that a cross has no power, and we do not praise the cross. We worship the Son of God who endured the pain and death on a cross in order to restore His creation unto himself. Of course, if Chris Tomlin who wrote the chorus to this hymn were to have tried to be very clear that it isn't the cross we worship the lyrics would have been something more like "Oh the wonderful Savior who died on a cross and defeated death so that we could repent and recieve forgiveness of sins and have eternal fellowship with God." But that doesn't fit the rhythm of the song and isn't very catchy, which is probably why he left it to the details in the verses to explain what he means by the wonderful cross :)
I'm not crazy about this video from youtube but it allows you to hear the song and they did put some good scriptures in it. May you bless His name and truly live in Him this day and everyday!
3 comments:
It would at least be a tad entertaining hearing him try to fit all those words to the music!
Thanks for visiting my blog, I look forward to reading more of yours.
How was your trip?
Thanks for visiting, I agre it would be funny to make an attempt at squeezing the a long line of words like that into the chorus of this song.
My trip was excellent other than the fact that I was away from my wife for three weeks. This was my fourth trip to Namibia. There's obviously way too much to say about it, but a few things to mention would be that people from my team got to help with a soup kitchen that helps feed hundreds of children in a very poor town, we painted the inside of a hall at our missionary friends' house which is used for training and outreach, played with kids at an orphanage regularly and helped some of them with their homework. Worshipped at a church that had African, Americans and Deutch people all in the same room- and got to try and figure out what songs in english we could all sing together!
I'd love to read a post about how your trips tom Namibia have impacted how you worship and relate to God.
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