the wonderful tragedy

Quite a number of years ago, I dabbled briefly with writing poetry. Every year at Valentine's Day, my wife and I write poems to one another; part of the game is to hide these verses so that the other will find them on that day. Sometimes the poems are pretty good, but more often they are bad, meaningful only to us because they represent a shared intimacy.

One year, though, I kept writing. I wanted to write something meaningful, perhaps to share with others what was on my heart, or maybe more accurately what was washing around in my head. What I think I learned was that, while I could convey my thoughts, I lacked the gift of being able to beautifully express those ideas.

One of the poems I wrote was entitled "The Wonderful Tragedy," in which I sought to share my heart about the cross of Christ: A tragedy in which the son of God became man and was executed as a criminal; wonderful in that it was the realized plan from all eternity of a loving God to reconcile sinful man to himself without denying his own righteousness and justice.

I remembered the poem today when I read this from Emil Brunner.

Only at the cross of Christ does man see fully what it is that separates him from God; yet it is here alone that he perceives that he is no longer separated from God. Nowhere else does the inviolable holiness of God, the impossibility of overlooking the guilt of man stand out more plainly; but nowhere else does the limitless mercy of God, which utterly transcends all human standards, stand out more clearly and plainly.