Go Texans!

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To say that my husband is a Houston Texans fan is an understatement. Therefore, when my son was 17 months old it only seemed logical to teach our son how to cheer for the most important football team by saying Go Texans.  My husband, wanting to pass down his love to sports to our son, was so proud.  Anytime our son would see the Texans emblem he would say Go Texans! It didn’t matter if he saw the emblem on a t-shirt, hat, bumper sticker, or flag; he could recognize it and say Go Texans! It didn’t matter if we were in the car, at the store or at a restaurant. If he saw the emblem, he would point and say Go Texans! This cute expression soon changed when I showed him the cross hanging on our wall and he said…… nothing. The puzzled look on his face as he tried to search for the word of this object was heartbreaking.  I felt awful. I’ve taught my son the Texans emblem before teaching him what the cross was.

You see, my son not only knows when and how to say Go Texans, but he also knows that this symbol is associated with words like football, tackle, and hut-hut just to name a few.  I wonder how many of us see the cross and associate it with love, mercy, grace, sacrifice and forgiveness. I am afraid that we look at the cross with the same puzzled look my son gave me and forget its true meaning. The cross is not just the place where Jesus died but much more.  One of my favorite versus about the cross is Colossians 2:14 which states “having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”  This verse makes me imagine a cross not only with nails at the hands and feet of Christ but the cross filled with nails and strips of paper all over it that marked our judgments and they were cancelled and nailed to it.  The cross is big and enough to hold it all. This is what I want to see every time I look at the cross. This makes me think of love, mercy, grace, sacrifice and forgiveness.