I’ve just completed this image for our front cover of the parish magazine: cross on the rubbish dump. You’ll notice that I’ve not signed this one…makes a change for me, but I didn’t feel it appropriate. Please feel free to use it though. Click an image to bring up a large size version you can then copy and paste.
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- Cross on a rubbish dump picture
You’ll also notice that there are 4 pictures! I completed the picture entirely on the ipad using artrage for ipad, which worked OK. I’m still not overly happy with the pencil tool on it – either its like using a pen or else it comes out looking like a leaky pen. OK for some work, but pencil looks better. Still, it will do. Four pictures because after an image is finished I will sometimes drop some effects onto it to see what happens – I couldn’t make up my mind which of the 4 I liked best. You can use any of them for facebook or whatever. If you are sharing on facebook, there’s a link at the bottom of this page. If you are putting it on the web or somewhere else, a link to this page would be nice, please.
The cross has been a main feature in art since really Christ was nailed to it. Sometimes it’s rather ornate, sometimes Jesus is on it, sometimes he isn’t. And of course the cross has, for some reason, made it’s way onto fashion jewelry and even as a print on clothing.
A little odd considering it was a brilliant way of killing people invented by Romans. I won’t go into details, because I want to keep this website suitable for kids, but some of the light side was:
- nails through wrists (not palms) and feet
- No clothes
- Jesus actually had a sponge on a stick which was used as lavatory paper shoved in his face to drink (humiliation!)
- you died either from blood loss, or suffocation
And yet Jesus said that he forgave everyone for what they were doing to him. Remarkable.
So why the image of the rubbish dump? Well where Jesus was crucified was outside of Jerusalem where it was a rubbish dump, on top of the hill. Incidentally, this was also where the Roman fort was which contained the toilet from which came the lavatorial sponge. (experts here will say it was soaked in cheap wine, or a drugged liquid….silly people! No evidence for it being drugged…and cheap wine is vinegar, both are fermented, its just translators could have gone either way. And vinegar is what the lavatorial sponge was soaked in to keep it clean and disinfected. This is also why it was on a stick…)
There is a deeper understanding here though. You see, our lives can be pretty rubbish. Admit it, you know the things you’ve done to mess up! And that carries with it a whole load of guilt and grief that is hard to live with. Now whether you want to say that you owe that guilt to God or not is immaterial right this minute, if you had a chance, wouldn’t you want to know that all the guilt was gone? Right, well I don’t know how it works (no one does!) but Jesus dying actually gives you the chance right now to get rid of the guilt. All you have to do is HONESTLY want to love God with all your heart, spirit and mind; and be willing to love others as yourself. It’s not that hard to love God as a response when you think that Jesus died to take away all that misery of guilt.
You are forgiven! Yep, God gets rid of the rubbish. It’s left on the rubbish heap along with the cross.
You can work out the details later. Oh, one thing, once you have decided to do this, then there is no going back. You can’t change your mind…So make sure you are ready for it first. It’s life changing.
