Christ on the Cross

This is an excerpt from a book called 'Meditations on the Cross' by: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it has been some wonderful holy week reading.

Christ on the cross, the murdered Son of God – that is the end of Cain’s history, and thus the end of all history. It is the last, desperate assault on the gates of paradise. The human race dies under the slashing sword, under the cross. But Christ lives. The trunk of the cross becomes the wood of life, and in the middle of the world life is established anew in the accursed ground. In the center of the world, from the wood of the cross, the fountain of life springs up anew, and all those thirsting for life are called to this water, and whoever has eaten of the wood of this life will never again hunger or thirst. A strange paradise, this hill of Golgotha, this cross, this blood, this broken body; a strange tree of life, this trunk on which God himself had to suffer and die – and yet here is bequeathed anew by God in grace: the kingdom of life, of resurrection, an open door of imperishable hope, of waiting, and of patience. Tree of life, cross of Christ, the center of God’s fallen and preserved world, that is the end of the story of paradise for us.
Today now he unlocks the door
To blessed paradise.
No angel bars it anymore,
To God all honor, glory and praise