The Cross Song

"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, or 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 someday for a crown."  If you are like, you have ceased reading, and started singing.  If not aloud, then silently.  If you are like me. you grew up singing, "The Old Rugged Cross."  While I have not been singing it as long as it has been sung (1912), it has been one of the songs stored away in my memory for a long time.

 

What was sung a lot in worship when I was a boy is not sung so much anymore. It could be that so much great music has been written to replace, but I doubt it.  The cross has slowly slipped out of existence in many churches.  The Apostle Paul wrote that some regarded it as foolishness in his day which is still the case in the current one.  And in a culture that is "all about me," there is hardly any room for the cross and its message.  In fact today's preachers prefer other themes. Another verse of that old song has a line which says, "Oh, that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,..."  How true it has become.

 

But, after that line about being despised by the world, the song says,  "Has a wondrous attraction for me"   How true that word still is for so many!  While our secular culture might call the cross unnecessary and its message a carry over from a less sophisticated age, there is nothing to which it can be compared and certainly, there is nothing which can take its place.  The cross is God's.  He put it and His Son on Calvary for you and me.  Take it away and we are indeed lost in our sin and the small pursuits of ourselves.