This crucifix hangs on the wall in the living room of my home, as a reminder to our family of all that God has done, is doing, and will do for each of us.
Christ Pantocrator - Icon.
A gift from a friend, the icon has found its place on the wall of my bedroom.
"The word Pantocrator is of Greek origin meaning "ruler of all". Christ Pantocrator is an icon of Christ represented full or half-length and full-faced. He holds the book of the Gospels in his left hand and blesses with his right hand.
The icon portrays Christ as the Righteous Judge and the Lover of Mankind, both at the same time. The Gospel is the book by which we are judged, and the blessing proclaims God's loving kindness toward us, showing us that he is giving us his forgiveness."
Information Site Link: http://orthodoxwiki.org/Pantocrator
The following information, prayers, meditations and scripture quotes, comes from the book, Journey For A Soul by George Appleton. It is a book of prayers and meditations . It was published in 1974 by Fontana Books.
Printed by: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, Glasgow.
"51. REDEMPTION THROUGH THE CROSS
We Christians often use the words ‘Christ died to save us from our sins.’ He shows us the limitless measure of God’s love and that draws our hearts to him. He makes known to us God’s forgiveness, not only in his teaching, but by the fact of his own forgiveness of those who brought him to the cross. There is something more which it is difficult to describe – he works within us, assuring us of God’s forgiveness, changing our hearts towards sin and selfishness, and sharing his risen life so that sin, though it may attack us, need find no entry.
INSIGHTS FROM SCRIPTURE
Conditions of redemptive vocation
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Isaiah 53:12
The condition of spiritual harvest
Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12:24
The drawing power of the cross and the ascension
I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.
John 12:32
The cost of redemption
You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
1 Peter 1:18-19
OTHER INSIGHTS
Undeserving but accepted
Justification is the establishment of a permanent relationship between a gracious God and those who are desperately in need of his grace. It is that act in which God declares himself to be unalterably favourably to one who is totally undeserving of his favour. It is that act in which a man who knows himself to be a sinner abandons every claim on God and every attempt to establish hos own righteousness, and declares his intention to rest for ever and only on the forgiveness of God declared and made real to him in Jesus Christ.
Stephen Neill in an unpublished manuscript
The redemptive force of love
For the creative Charity of God, as experienced by man, is a redemptive force. It comes into human life in Christ, his Spirit, his Church, his sacraments, and his saints, not to inform but to transform; to rescue from the downward pull which is felt throughout the natural order, to reform, energize, and at last sanctify the souls of men, making those rescued souls in their turn part of the redeeming organism through which the salvation of the world shall be achieved.
Continuing redemption
No baseness or cruelty of treason so deep or so tragic shall enter our human world, that the loyal love shall be able in due time to oppose to just that deed of treason its fitting deed of atonement. The deed of atonement shall be so wise and so rich in its efficacy that the spiritual world, after the atoning deed, shall be better, richer, more triumphant amid all its irrevocable tragedies, than it was before the traitor’s deed was done.
Josiah Royce
PRAYERS
Without Jesus Christ
O Lord Jesus Christ, without you I would not have known the limitless love of God. Without you I would not have known the extent of God’s forgiveness or seen it in operation on the cross. Without your rescue I would still be submerged in weakness and sin. Without you I would not have the divine grace to transform my life. Without you I would not have known the Kingdom of God
Mindful of the love
Lord God, in return for thy great love I would bring an offering, but there is only one worthy offering, the perfect obedience of thy Son even unto death.
Lord God, I remember that offering, I plead it before thee.
And though it be all-sufficient I add to it the offering of myself, body, mind, and spirit, mind, heart, and will, all that I have, all that I am, all that by thy grace I can become.
Accept, O Lord God, this unworthy sacrifice and cleanse and sanctify and use it in thy service of thy Kingdom for his dear sake.
Crucified with Christ
O God our Father, help us to nail to the cross of thy dear Son the whole body of our death, the wrong desires of the heart, the sinful devisings of the mind, the corrupt apprehensions of the eyes, the cruel words of the tongue, the ill employment of hands and feet; that the old man being crucified and done away, the new man may live and grow into the glorious likeness of the same thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Eric Milner-White
Blessed be thou, O Lord Christ, who didst die not to save us from punishment, but to save us from our sins and to raise us to new life."
George Appleton graduated Selwyn College, Cambridge. Ordained in 1925, he worked in East London for two years. From there he moved on to spend over twenty years as priest in Burma and India. Next, he spent seven years in the City of London. In 1963 he became Archbishop of Western Australia. From 1968 through 1974 he was Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem and the Middle East. He died in 1993.
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