Crosses

For Christmas 2019, I was not going to send cards. Are they worth the bother? Would anyone notice the absence? I could always send Valentine or other cards later in the year. But then I thought I should make one for my mother and my best friend who would really appreciate a card.
I started with Scripture, hunting up the usual Christmas passages- prophesies of the promised Messiah and accounts of his birth. In the gospel of John, I found gold. While the gospel of Matthew zooms in on the details of the night there was no room in the inn, John zooms out to the big picture, the why. John 1:14 starts off, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us..." We hear this part often. The entire Christmas story in eight  words. Jesus, the Word, coexistent with the Father, makes good on the promise to be Immanuel, God with us, in the most humble and fragile way possible. 

​He also came in glory, fully God as well as fully human. The verse continues, "and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth." He became flesh in order to be the final atoning sacrifice for the sin that Adam and Eve let out of the bag. We sing a lot of "glorias" at Christmas but my mind went to the glory of the cross, when adult Jesus took my place. He took to the cross, took into his flesh, all my sin, all my selfishness, everything in me that is contrary to him. By enduring the cross, held there by his obedience as much or more than any nail, and being raised from the grave on the third day, he washed away all that awful as if it never existed. Freed me from it. Fixed my relationship with the Father as if Adam and Eve had never broken it. Grace undeserved. Truth revealed.  
Fueled by the excerpt, "...and we have seen his glory..." I cut  strips of left over palette trash and started to play. I may have attempted an abstract nativity but quickly moved on to cross forms. Two crosses turned into four. Then I was on a roll and kept working past Christmas. About 25 altogether were made. All on paper, ranging from 2.5 to 4 inches square. A few were mailed before I thought to photograph them. Here are 20 or so.