God on the Gallows

As I enter this time of prayer, I repeat the words of Psalm 55:6–8, slowly, several times, making them my prayer to God:

‘Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!

I would fly away and be at rest.

I would flee far away and stay in the desert;

I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm.’

Pause and repeat

Pause to read the passage Mark 15:37–39

(TW: Please note that the following thought contains a disturbing story about the death of child.)

I recount the devastating story of the hanging of a boy in Auschwitz while the other prisoners, including the author Elie Wiesel, were forced to watch. ‘For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive as I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: Where is God now? And I heard a voice within me answer him: Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows’*,**

Is there any aspect of my current situation—however bleak—to which I can point and say, with a mixture of horror and hope: ‘There is God’? Is it possible to identify His presence within the pain of my present predicament, or only in the prospect of some future deliverance?

Pause and reflect

I take a little time now to thank Jesus for coming close to me in my doubt and despair. For suffering with me and for me as He hung there on that cross.

Pause and pray

As I bring this time with God to a close, I pray the words of ‘Crucified with Christ,’ from Paul’s letter to the Galatians (2:20 MSG):

‘I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before [others] … and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life [I am] living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.’

Amen.

*Pete Greig, God on Mute, David C Cook, (Colorado Springs, 2020), p220

** Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 62.