The following is increasingly uncomfortable. I can’t turn back. I don’t want to go on. I have limped along at a distance through the maze of twisted streets, half hoping not to be noticed. I’ve been climbing on my hands and knees behind him, cursing this narrow path, praying for escape. For in the fearful ascent I have been uncovered for who I truly am. I have travelled the road and it leads to the place of the skull. Standing unclothed I am the laughingstock of my closest friends and deepest enemies. The sudden and shaming revealing of self hits me hard in the pit of my stomach. The light pierces and burns, illuminating corrupted flesh and a calloused heart. My punishment is all around me. Yet in this shame there is a grace, for I have not been left here to decay. So I submit to the pain of uncovering. Here humiliation is mercy, for though I have fallen, it is not over the precipice, close as I have been groping to the edge. I have stumbled over Jesus himself, and in the fall is my salvation.
~lg
