As our church family seeks to live Cross-centered lives in 2020, two hymns have already been helpful for us to consider and are serving as our theme songs throughout the year. One is a beloved classic hymn, and another has already become deeply loved by many in less than two decades.
Elizabeth C. Clephane (1830-1869) wrote the classic hymn “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” at age 38, just a year before her untimely homegoing. Her text is an intensely personal account of standing beneath the cross, at times beholding Christ’s “dying form,” asking only “His face” for sunshine. Clephane ends by proclaiming her willingness to glory in what the Romans had meant to signify cruel, ignominious death: “my glory all the Cross.”
First published in 2006, Keith & Kristyn Getty’s modern hymn “Beneath the Cross” is also introspective. Each stanza takes a different theme. The first stanza glories in the atonement found at the Cross, and the second in the community of believers we join there. The third reminds us that the Cross is only “the path before the Crown.”
We pray you live beneath the Cross this year. Perhaps these hymns can help.