Recycled Cross

As we are approaching Holy Week, this is the first of ten posts in which I am going to include photographs of different crosses I have and say something about them, recognising, of course, that in every case they speak all of the wonderful message of the Cross and all that means. This is the one that I have had the longest. It was given to me, as I recollect, just before my ordination, and that was way back in 1979. At that time my parents (and siblings) lived in Wigan, and my father was the minister of the United Reformed Church there, with which I got quite involved for a short while. This cross, as a note stuck to the bottom of it says, was made from early Victorian timbers of Wigan Parish Church, and it was made as a commemoration of the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, 1977, the year, as it happens, in which I graduated from the University of Glasgow. It is because it was made from something else that I am describing it as recycled, but I do find that singularly appropriate,

I love the simplicity of this cross, I think the only cross that has accompanied me throughout my ministry. I think that all the others are more decorated and/or ornate, well maybe bar one, and that's different - we'll come to that on Sunday. I am reminded of the words of Isaac Watts' hymn:

When I survey the wondrous cross

on which the Prince of glory died,

my richest gain I count but loss

and pour contempt on all my pride.