She was a heavy-hearted maiden, this woman that knelt before the Cross. Life had certainly dealt strong blows to this lady. Her brow was furrowed with care; her appearance was that of one years older than she really was. And such a burden as she carried around...sometimes she felt as if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.

The path of her life had been difficult, and fraught with many sorrows and mistakes. She felt that she had been doomed from the day she was conceived. Her mother had died just days after giving birth to her; her father had been a shiftless sort of fellow that could hardly care for himself, let alone a young daughter. There had always been women around feeling it was their duty to help raise the child—housekeepers and nannies and such, but no one had ever really loved her or nurtured her in the way children need to be loved and nurtured.

She grew into a rebellious teenager; rebelling against anything and everything. If she was told to do it, you may be assured she didn't do it (whatever “it” may have been); she rebelled against all of society's mores and would have been a full-fledged criminal had she had the guts to be one.

She was barely out of high school when she accepted an offer of marriage from a selfish young man who cared nothing for anything or anyone except himself. They were happily married a week; unhappily married two years; and then they divorced. After that, she gave herself—heart and body—to countless other young men. She spent life in a carefree manner, jumping in and out of relationships with handsome men; harming her body with excessive amounts of drugs and alcohol; generally doing anything that might be considered “bad,” and seeming to find a sort of pleasure in it.

But underneath her hard exterior, was a sensitive heart that had been wounded deeply. It had, from the first, been wounded by others; and it had continued to be wounded by her own poor choices. She hid her pain from the world—in all appearances, she was completely happy with her life, but deep inside she was falling apart.

Now she knelt at the Cross, a tired and hurting being. Tears streamed unashamedly down her cheeks as she looked into the eyes of the One who had died for her.

“I'm so unworthy,” she sobbed. “I've failed You in so many ways. My heart is so black, my sins are so great.”

“It was for You I died,” He whispered softly to her heart. “Your sins will be forgotten and your heart will be made clean if you will only turn it over to Me.”

In that quiet moment, she tearfully and sincerely repented of her sins and relinquished her hold on her life—giving her self, her life, her heart, her all, over to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Rising from the Cross, she felt the heavy burden falling off her back. She walked away from the Cross that day with a new light in her eyes, a new heart beating within her, a new joy that none could take from her; in short, she walked away a new person.

But she came back many, many times—to kneel and at the feet of the One who had cast her sins as far from her as the east is from the west; to worship the One who had redeemed her; to praise the One who alone was worthy to be praised.