The Old Rugged Cross...

The year 2008. At the US Consulate in Chennai, I was standing in a long line at for VISA clearance. Behind me was a cassock robed elderly priest. From the cassock he wore,  I guessed he was from Catholic denomination. After making a few eye contacts, I accosted him in a conversation, “Father, are you for a VISA clearance to US?” … “ Yes, going on a parish mission.” “Me too”, I said. Then  I sprang up more courage to continue the conversation, and chipped in, “ Father, do you think we deserve all this?  That old rugged empty cross made our journey possible, isn’t it ?”  He smiled having no words to answer.

First Methodist Episcopal Church of Pokagon where
The Old Rugged Cross was first sung.
This church finds a place in
the National Register of Historic Places of USA

The year 1913… a small church in Pokagon was arranging a series of revival meetings. The Pastor was Rev. Leroy Bostwick, and he had called his friend Rev.Bennard to assist him in singing. Bennard was a gospel singer and an evangelist. A couple of weeks before assisting Rev. Leroy, he was singing a verse and chorus he had written,  in a small revival meeting at Michigan.  Bennard was ridiculed over that song by a group of youths who attended the prayer meeting.  But, traveling to Pokagon to assist Bostwick, Bennard did not quit on those verses he had scribbled. He studied more about the Cross and its significance.

At Pokagon, the revival meeting was in progress. And Bennard was working on the verse he had sung at Michigan. He sought the assistance of Rev. Leroy’s wife, Ruby, to be a sounding board for redoing his song. As the days progressed, at the church parsonage, he added more verses and composed the music… and he was readily strumming his guitar for a rehearsal. As Bennard ended his first rehearsal, it is said that Ruby was weeping aloud on her knees, in the presence of her husband Rev.Leroy.  Later that day, on 12^th January 1913 (the last day of the revival meeting), a gospel song was born which would influence every Christian who would ever listen to it. That song went on for 100 years and more to be performed by some of the twentieth century's most important recording artists in the West.

 

Each time I hear the ‘The Old Rugged Cross’, it shatters ALL my sense (myth) of self-righteousness. Where am I? What am I?  How am I? … these questions which reverberate in me will all end, I know, only when “my trophies, at last, I lay down …  (and when) I will cling to the old rugged Cross … And exchange it someday for a crown .”

"The Old Rugged Cross" to me is the one the great eloquence of Christian faith at all ages.

~Fine~