Beyond the lowering clouds, beyond the moon and sun, beyond the stars our eyes could see and beyond the stars we could not see. Beyond them. Far, far, unimaginably far beyond them. If one were to take flight from earth and rise higher and higher, earth would recede as if it were sucked away from our vision. It would shrink to a mere point of light and then disappear altogether. Turning around we see more points of light now streaking across the blackness as we step across the barriers of time, until we reach the edge, the last cluster on the perimeter of the creation, the last star, the last source of luminosity in the blackness beyond. Finally we reach the most distant orb in the heavens, the end of infinity, the extremity of all created: the last stop before we move into the abyss or whatever it is, beyond. Here we pause as we listen, in absolute cold, to silence. From the silence comes a faint awareness of weeping. Somewhere in the black is a Light we cannot see. It is a Place. An Abode. A Home from which comes this awareness of terrible brokenness. Then, at once, a shattering scream, heard not in the vacant cosmos, but in the heart.

An infinite distance away on tiny earth, great granite boulders split as if they were dried bread. The ground beneath those that stood by, the watchers, shook uncontrollably as if in spasm. The cross moved, the dead mass of tissue and bone swaying like a sack of salt. The great curtain hanging in Herod's Temple, seamless and thick, violently rent from top to bottom. There was nothing now to guard the place called the Holy of Holies. The altar, the candlesticks, all laid bare in unholy disarray. In cemeteries round about Jerusalem, great stones rolled away from the doors of sepulchres. Bodies of loved ones, and some not so loved, humans long dead, appeared in their entrances as if fresh from the finger of God. There arose an outcry of great fear. In all of human history, in all of the writings, in all of the stories passed down from ancestor to ancestor, there had never been anything like this . . . Wednesday, 14 Nisan, a day conceived in blackness, yet brought forth in the light of holiness.

Urbanus, Centurion to Caesar, and onetime friend to the family Joseph, sat astride his stallion and stared. For the first time in his life he was afraid. His men, those who had crucified Jesus, who had driven the nails through his hands and feet, who had laughed and mocked and taunted, those who had gambled for his clothing, now fell to their knees. Afraid of what, he knew not. He was not a believer in the Jew God nor any of those manufactured by the Roman government he served. His eyes traversed the happenings around him, his mount shying from the trembling earth. The horse reared, pawing the air, but Urbanus was not unhorsed. His eyes once again came to focus on the dead form of the man he had once thought to befriend. He felt the hair on his neck rise and his body chill. He trembled. He remembered the argument in his father's home. He remembered, "By Caesar, go against me and I'll witness for myself the day of your death!" And he remembered Eh-Ret, the Nubian slave. What had he said? The words slammed into him like bolts of lightning, "You will kill, my little friend. In your time. In your place." Ubanus had, at last, killed his lion'the Lion of the Tribe of Judah! Oh, my Lord God! Oh, my Lord, my friend Jesus, my God! Forgive me. You are righteous beyond my empty ability to conceive. Surely. . . surely, you were, you are the Son of God! Hot tears welled in his eyes, coursed down his face and into his lips. He tasted their salt.

What is my worth to God? Your worth, dear reader? We are all so pious and glib in saying, "I am not worthy of the least of his favor." Perhaps God, himself, sees it differently.

Now, these many years after this terrible event, my heart is at peace. What am I worth to God the Father? First, it should be said that as humankind knows and perceives, no man or woman alive or dead is worthy to stand before the Son of Man, both now, in ancient times, or forevermore.

What, then, is the measure of my worth to God? Why am I not cast off and laid among the excrement of human evil? There exists one stark and solitary instrument of measure that provides the answer: those beams of wood on which my Jesus died.

I'll never erase from my mind the image of my Lord racked with pain, willingly submitting himself to agonizing torture, and finally death, as he did . . . for me and for you. I cannot recall those hours without remembering the horrible unworthiness that I felt. But God did not mean it so. When I look back upon the cross and the great cost it represents to the Father, I know my worth. It is wholly beyond the comprehension of men that God would allow something like that for no value in return. His value is me. His value is you. Whenever you question your value to God, may I beg you to see again the cross and that horribly agonized form on it. In that form, I present to you the price, the value of your worth to God!