“Railroad flats” in Brooklyn were apartments without hallways and missing a few walls. The rooms were lined up single file, and you passed through one room to get to the next. Windows were in short supply which limited ventilation, light, and even aesthetic appeal. But, such was life in Brooklyn. Stacking railroad flats on top of railroad flats created cramped communities of four story brick buildings. Growing up in a railroad flat and being a family with eight children meant adapting sleeping quarters. The two bedrooms for the siblings opened up to each other and with two single beds in each room and two kids in each bed, each child pillowed at a different end of each bed. But what drew us together each night was not the spacial closeness, but the hymns our mother sang to us. Somebody always slept a little nearer the wall to allow Mom a place to sit while she sang hymn after hymn to us until we all drifted off to sleep. Mom had her favorites and we heard them often. It was Mom’s faith being passed down to her children and as the decades have passed, I have come to a deep appreciation of the richness of truth and reality in the words she sang.
Recently, I was gifted with the words of one of Mom’s favorites on a throw crafted in the Blue Ridge Mountains. On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame; and I love that old cross where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain. So I'll cherish the old rugged cross, till my trophies at last I lay down; I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it some day for a crown. The Christ who came to a people who would scorn and reject Him had nothing about His appearance that would attract others to Him. And the cross His naked, shamed, and abused body was nailed to, had nothing in it to attract others. Crucifixion was gruesome and humiliating, its physical torment excruciating. But the shame was not only physical. The Christ, the dearest and best, the sinless, perfect purity begotten by the Father who had given life to those who crucified Him, this Christ became sin, the very essence of what His Father despised. Why? Why did He do it? It was for our rebellion, our sin, our wrong. The shame of my own past became His shame, and a world of sinners from thousands of generations mingled their shame with mine, striking Him down, condemning Him, burying Him like a criminal. The excruciation of the cross though, accomplished the will and plan of the Father. For the sinner who learns to cherish the cross, and to cling to the purpose and accomplishment of the cross, the blood stains of that cross bring forgiveness for all the sins that held Christ’s nails in place. His shame erases my shame. His suffering forbids my own suffering of judgment.
I will cling to the old rugged cross. It is the testimony of every child of God. It is my testimony, and prayerfully, it is yours. Perhaps we can find our own song to sing to pass on the richness of truth and reality to still others.
– Bev
(Related Bible reading: Isaiah 53:3-11)
