Category: Theology

Crafted from wood - a hymn on the cross – Luke 9:23; 14:27

Crafted from wood, the grain of our decision, 
where faith was hung, a challenge to God’s love, 
the Christ had carried it to execution,
this then our choice – the wing of hawk or dove?

Some made the choice that led to their extinction, 
their’s was a loss, but not of love or grace,
accepting in each place of human crisis, 
this challenge that each Christian has to face.

Take up your cross each day was Christ’s suggestion,
if you would follow in the path he  trod, 
yet we would minimise the resurrection, 
that love transcending death can lead to God.

Words 2025 © Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Metre: 11.10.11.10 
Tune: O PERFECT LOVE (Barnby)

Some thoughts on this hymn to take us further. 

I had in mind, as I wrote it: 

Luke 9:23;14:27
23 Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised)

14:27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Also: 

Søren Kierkegaard

In Kierkegaard's view, the Church should not try to prove Christianity or even defend it. It should help the single individual to make a leap of faith, the faith that God is love and has a task for that very same single individual. Kierkegaard identified the leap of faith as the good resolution. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard)

And 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ – Bonhoeffer stood against Fascism and was ultimately sent to a concentration camp and he was hanged on 9 April 1945 during the collapse of the Nazi regime.

All these point for me to Jesus’ words and how others have seen them and sought to live by them.