What Remains After The Cross?

Apr 5

Written By Pauline

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The World Before Dawn

Have you ever suffered a sleepless night after losing someone or something dear to you? With eyes sore and puffy from crying, you look out the window and notice how incredibly dark it is, no matter how much moonlight or starlight there might be. The pain you feel won’t be easily or neatly resolved. You wait for dawn, hoping the rising sun will bring some clarity and relief. Some kind of redemption.

Some stories don’t begin in light. Mine don’t. I write about people facing authentic trauma, difficult memories, unanswered questions, and the struggle just to survive. In life, some situations or people don’t feel redeemable.

The Question Beneath the Pain

In times like these, where is God in the suffering? Is there meaning in what was broken or lost?

I write because I frequently ask these questions in my own life, and my stories reflect that same search for meaning in my characters’ lives. In my upcoming novel, What Remains After, a young girl survives horrific circumstances and grows into adulthood carrying those same questions. She is shaped by what she lived through, seeking meaning and healing.

My stories exist because real people experience these things and ask these questions every day.

That Which Is Both Severe and Beautiful

Then comes Easter.

Pastel eggs are handed out by a fluffy bunny bouncing across a green lawn to happy children. That’s the common cultural impression of Easter. But Easter, in its origin, is not built on pastel comfort.

It is the remembrance of the greatest sacrifice in human history. It is about justice being met, and mercy being extended through unimaginable grace. This grace was not earned by any human being at any point in time, past, present, or future. It is not deserved. Quite the contrary. And it was given at the ultimate cost. Easter is about what real grace is.

The Good News

Real grace is a gift from God.

The truth is, no human being is free from violating the standards God has set forth in His Word. We can argue our own goodness, but Scripture tells us otherwise. We are fallen at our core. Have you kept all Ten Commandments? No? Then you fall into this category. Romans 3:23 says, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And the penalty for sin is death (Romans 6:23). Not just physical death, though that is part of it, but eternal separation from God—the source of all that is good, righteous, holy, and true. Scripture calls this separation Hell.

This is sobering. Heavy. Final.

But it is not the end of the story.

God, not wanting any of us to perish in this way, sent His only Son to die in our place. Even while we sinned and rebelled, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). He took our punishment. Paid it in full (John 3:16–17). Jesus was tried, condemned, and executed in one of the most brutal forms of death—crucifixion. On that cross, He experienced separation from the Father (Matthew 27:46), bearing the full weight of our sin.

But He did not remain in the grave.

Three days later, He rose again.

He made a way for all who believe in Him to have eternal life—justified before God, not by our merit, but by His.

Easter is not about egg hunts or chocolate bunnies. It is about saving grace. This is redemption—not metaphor, but reality. Isaiah wrote of it centuries before it happened: “But He was pierced for our transgressions…” (Isaiah 53:5). Romans 3:23 declares our guilt, but the very next verses declare our hope: we “are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus… to be received by faith” (Romans 3:24–25).

That word “propitiation” simply means a payment that satisfies. Jesus’ death and resurrection satisfied the debt we owed.

From History to Personal Reality

This is not only something that happened thousands of years ago. It reaches into our lives today.

Jesus’ sacrifice not only saves us from the penalty of sin, but meets us in its consequences: trauma, abuse, loss, and fear that lingers long after the moment has passed. In that darkness, we can feel beyond redemption. But the cross and the resurrection say otherwise. There is no darkness beyond redemption. God’s grace is for our everyday.

My author brand, Stories of Consequence, is built on the idea of Redemptive Realism: facing the darkest parts of life honestly, without leaving the reader there. My writing does not deny pain. It does not offer easy answers. But it does offer the answer: the Cross and the Resurrection. The cross is the most honest story ever told about suffering. The resurrection is the truest story ever told about hope.

In What Remains After, my main character survives trauma that shapes the woman she becomes. But her story does not end there. She confronts God with her pain and questions—and is met with grace. Because those questions are not just hers. They are ours. What remains after devastation? What remains after the cross?

My Heart’s Desire

My hope, as a writer, is that when you read What Remains After—or anything I write—you encounter something deeper than story. I want you to discover grace. I want you to see hope in Christ through the eyes of imperfect people.

To those carrying pain from trauma or loss, to those who feel defined by what has happened to them, hear this: Your past is not the final word. Because of Jesus Christ—His work on the cross and His resurrection—redemption is possible through faith in Him. What was accomplished on Good Friday and celebrated on Easter Sunday is for you, if you receive it by faith.

Imagine sitting by the window in the darkness, waiting. Then the horizon begins to change. Midnight blue softens into grey, then blushes into pink, then opens into light. That is what Christ has done. Light breaks in. Just as the light of redemption broke through the darkness of sin. Easter changes what remains after sin. It gives us hope—real hope—of redemption and healing.

Jesus promises this in Revelation 21:5: “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Let Him make all things new for you, too.

Stories of Consequence
Fiction that faces the dark, but ends in light.

May God bless you richly,

Pauline J. Grabia