It was last year on January 4 that I read a sentence from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening devotional book that floored me: Abide hard by the cross, and search the mystery of His wounds. The words may as well have been highlighted. I was drawn to them, startled by them, and knew that I had to go about finding out what they meant.

Those words have followed me through the year. No, they have prodded me, pulled me. They have been God’s call, loud and clear. He made it his business to arrange life throughout the year so that I would, of necessity, learn more of what it means to abide hard by the cross. Abiding there, I could begin to search the mystery of His wounds.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God; and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:4-6).

Abiding hard by the cross speaks to me of endurance, steadfastness, pressing upon it with all the might of him who works in me. Searching the mystery of his wounds–the breathtaking reality of all they represent–I find myself wordless as I try to write something of the tremendous agony and the supreme joy that comes from meditating on the cross and what Jesus provided for us there. There’s a knot in my throat and tears in my eyes, but words seem completely inadequate.

Only this: nearness to Jesus draws my eyes to him. The things of earth grow strangely dim, as the old gospel song says. My perspective changes from my favorite focus, me, to the concerns of the mind of Christ. Eternity is in view, and I must be about the Father’s business.