QUESTION OF THE DAY #38: In addition to wedding rings, what is your favorite piece of jewelry? 

There is a lot of really good jewelry, to be sure, but since I'm a guy who's pretty hard on things, most of my jewelry just hasn't stood the test of time.  Rings have been dented.  Pendants have been broken.  Watches have been lost.  Metal has been tarnished, and since I don't have any piercings, that rules out a whole category. 

I do have a pendant that I wear.  I bought it last year, and it's still sticking around.  I got it at the Mall of America, in St. Paul, Minnesota, at one of those vendors in the middle of the place.  It has a good solid chain and heavy duty clasp.  Attached is a metal figure of a cross entitled "love as strong as steel."

I think of the Roman soldier, a centurion no less, watching over the crucifixion.  He surveyed the scene and cried out, "Surely this was the Son of God."  He recognized the strength on display--even and especially in the death of Jesus.  The cross, back then, was not jewelry, of course.  It was a hated, dreadful thing.  Roman soldiers were frighteningly skillful at making death as drawn out and as painful as possible.  The cross was their torturous tool of choice. 

And while, in its original form, the cross displayed all the ugliness of the depths of human experience, now it has been transformed.  The death Jesus died on a cross stands for all time as the payment for our guilt.  So now we trust in our risen and living and triumphant Savior, Jesus.  The cross is now a reminder of the depth and width and height of God's strong love.

Ephesians 3:17–19 (ESV)
...so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.