하나님께 가까이 함이 내게 복이라(시편73:28)

By Eun Suk Cho

The symbol I chose is the Cross, on which Jesus Christ was crucified. By the symbol I feel I am a Christian, belonging to a category of people with a specific ways of living. As Jesus Christ came to the earth in order to show the love of God, and the love was declared in on the Cross fully, the Cross is the symbol of the love of God. People may have different symbols for love, like heart, but the Cross for me is specific, making me understand the Bible which tesches me of the spirit of the Cross, and driving me to live the life of loving others just as Jesus Christ taught as he carried it. The Cross is a favorate symbol for many people, seen the applied figure of which in the national flags and pendants of many men and women, for example. For me, the Cross is somewhat living one in me so that I developed that spirituality in the making croses out of everyday woods and sharing them to anyone who are interested. Making and sharing of the Cross are more than social but spiritual actions. By doing them, I have time of reflection, thinking of the meaning of Jesus Christ by his coming to us and giving us the true love so that I look for the ways of reaching out to the others in the love of the Cross. CCSF has the motto that the Truth shall make you free, coming from the words that Jesus Christ spoke, written in John 8:32. Here, the Truth is himself, revealed truly on the Cross. It seems not happeded by chance that the Cross on Mt Davidson is identical by direction and angle with the body cross of St Francis, standing in front of the CCSF motto inscribed building, the Science Hall. The body cross was made in 1960s as a symbol of the love of Jesus Christ, hoping the idea be realized in the US as the peaceful society without killing by guns. It is said that some thousand guns were collected to make that statue of the Cross. In the front body of that St Francis, who used to pray the prayer of peace request, there are four figures who were killed by gun, in whom there is Martin Luther King Jr as well as JFK. The Cross on the Mt Davidson was constructed in 1930s after several trials and in the dedication service, FDR, the US President of the day attended. It was the time of depression; all the people in the US, and most countries in the world, were looking for the actualization of the hope, only to be found in Jesus Christ. The Cross as a symbol in me, living in San Francisco, studying at CCSF, by the subject of cultural anthropology, sheds me the light of Jesus Christ, the Savior, who invited all of us, heavily burdened by life matters, promissing the peace, never the same as anything the world promisses. The world is commercial; Jesus Christ by the Cross is spiritual. What is meaningful comes from what is spiritual, not commercial. The Cross by the meaning in the symbol goes beyond the materialism on which the secularism resides.