Crosses and toads

At a school assembly I was trying to explain about the cross at Calvary. Today we see many beautiful crosses, works of art, on public display. Yet they had their origin in an early form of capital punishment which reduced its victims to a degraded and disgusting state.

To help the children understand how people would react to this, I asked for suggestions of disgusting things you might find on a pavement. One girl replied, "Bugs!" I didn't understand her Northern accent at first, and looked round desperately for someone to translate. "Creepy-crawlies," somebody explained helpfully, "like worms or frogs or toads".

This took me aback because I don't see frogs and toads as being disgusting. They are fascinating creatures. As a child I loved to take frogspawn home and see tadpoles and then frogs emerge. In fact, only the other day, I had picked up a toad and taken it to the other side of a perilous major road which it was about to cross!

What was disgusting to some local children brought out the best in me.

Over the centuries many people have looked at the state the Son of God was reduced to on the cross and turned away disgusted. Yet others have looked at that scene and found blessing and healing for their souls.

Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:1-6 NIV)