EVIL MAKES EVEN ITS OBSERVER ITS VICTIM, EXCEPT WHEN…

“I’ll never forget it!”
“I couldn’t stand to watch.”
“Don’t look, it’s too much.”
“It made me physically sick.”

Come upon an accident or crime scene and you’ll hear these phrases.

Three and a half decades of brutal scenes in 106 countries have victimized my memory.

The enemy of peace and calm in your mind knows he can draw you into the scene with human, inborn morbid curiosity. He knows the scene will then steal from you, and make you a victim, too.

But, oh wonderful the thought, there is one crime scene where it works just the opposite. Far from making you a victim, one look can make you the victor. And whether they know it or not there is a cry in every human heart to visit the scene.

It’s the crime at Calvary, the cross.

The pattern began with Moses in the wilderness. God instructed him to put a brazen serpent upon a pole. If the snake-bitten people would but look upon the lifted-up brass snake, they would be made whole.

“Look and live,” they were told.

When I first thought into this I knew the brazen serpent on a pole was symbolic of Christ’s crucifixion, but I rebelled at the snake being the pattern for Christ.

Then, waves of guilt swept over me when I realized that the snake was, indeed, appropriate. The snake is symbolic of sin. Jesus who knew no sin, became sin for us on the cross. He took all our sins, my sins, to that lifted-up, atoning altar.

Guilt changed to praise when I looked to the cross.