The God Who Hung on a Cross

By Kay Moll

In 1999 an evangelist visited a village in the northern part of Cambodia that for many years had been under the control of the Khmer Rouge. Christianity was seemingly unheard of. If people professed any kind of faith, it was in Buddha or their ancestral spirits.

But when the evangelist came to this particular village, he was surprised at the people”s eagerness to hear and respond to the gospel. He said it seemed to him as though they had been waiting for him. One old woman told him they had been waiting . . . waiting for 20 years!

She described what happened when the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge came to their village. They dragged people out of their huts and forced them to begin digging a deep pit that the villagers knew would be their common grave. They shot anyone who tried to escape.

When the pit was dug, the people were told to stand at the edge of it. They waited for the blows that would bring death. They began to cry out . . . to their ancestors . . . to their gods . . . to anyone they thought might help. One woman remembered a story her mother had told her a long time before and she began to cry out to “the God who hung on a cross.” She thought if anyone would care about what was happening to them, it would be a “God who hung on a cross,” a God who knew what it was like to suffer. Others took up the cry and then something incredible happened. Instead of killing them, the soldiers just slipped away into the forest and left them there. Since then, the people had been waiting for someone to come and tell them more about this God.1

As we come around this table today, we remember when we were weighed down by sin, unable to help ourselves. Desperate. Condemned to die. But then we learned that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

We remember his body, broken for us. We remember his blood, spilled out for us. We give thanks for that sacrifice. We give thanks to “the God who hung on a cross.”

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1Taken from The God Who Hung on the Cross by Dois I. Rosser Jr. and Ellen Vaughn, 2003 by International Cooperating Ministries. Used by permission of Zondervan; www.zondervan.com.

Kay Moll is a speaker and writer living in Mason, Ohio.