The Messiah is exiled from God on the cross as Israel was. Forsaken as Israel was forsaken. Cast away from Yahweh as Israel was. Why?

Infamy allows us the opportunity to hone one of our favorite skills: to shrink a 343-page life story down to a single paragraph that narrates what happened on one day, at a certain hour, and in a certain location. We can whittle an entire biography down to a single Tweet.

There’s something very attractive about both the cross-ladder and the cross-crutches. In fact, there’s something about both of them that the woodworker within us finds eminently more appealing than the simple cross of Jesus.

If he was not flesh, who was hung on the cross? And if he was not God, who shook the earth from its foundations?

No, when the Lord is ready for battle, of all creatures, he commissions Mary’s little lamb.

I looked up at the cross and saw what God had become to bring me home. He had become what I was.

It doesn’t matter how good you seem to be, you’ll always be able to find someone who seems better than you. We’re addicted to comparing, measuring, quantifying, and judging.

What is most amazing to me is not that Jesus welcomed public transgressors into his company. What astounds me is that they came to him with the full expectation of not being turned away.

From creator to priest, our God now moves, from forming animals to slaying them, all so that His Adam and His Eve might remain truly His.