The poetry prompt over at dVerse Poets Pub today is to write about “the beautiful sadness.” Stuart McPherson is hosting and has laid down quite the challenge. For me the choice of what to write about was easy: the saddest and most beautiful scene in all of history.
The Beauty of the Cross
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Did you see the beauty of His wounds?
The mockers could not see the love
Shed in blood and tears
I was not there but in my mind
I see the scene play out with pain
Sadness mixed with the joy of victory
Over sin and darkness within
A crown of thorns more beautiful
Than any crown of gold and jewels
Upon His bleeding brow as
Blood poured down His lovely face
How can there be beauty in such cruelty?
How can there be more than sadness in
The nails that pierced the hands of the Divine?
Beauty lies in the love and mercy beneath it all
Not everyone sees the beauty of the cross or the beauty in this man who was God tortured and crucified. Many see only the ugliness of a man wounded and bleeding, and turn away from scenes of this moment in history. The prophet Isaiah wrote of the coming Messiah:
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Isaiah 53:2-3 (NIV).
For me the only thing more beautiful than the cross in all the world is the empty tomb and the risen Christ.