In a sense, our whole life is a search for a key. We are looking for a key that will answer some of life's bottom line questions like "Why am I here? How can I find love that I won't lose and a relationship that I can totally trust?

How can I find lasting peace? What happens after I die?" We look a lot of places for answers.

It may be that your inner search is taking you through a series of relationships, down a variety of spiritual roads with various approaches to God, or maybe through some successes that were supposed to quiet your heart. Maybe the key you've been looking for has been right in front of you all along, on a road so familiar and so accessible that you've missed it.

The Word of God will take you right there. You'll have to climb a hill called Skull Hill outside the city of Jerusalem. There you will find the One and only Son of God battered and bleeding on a Roman cross. In Mark 15:39 it says, "And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard His cry and saw how He died, he said, 'Surely this was the Son of God!'" The executioner didn't believe that when he came there that day, but he left believing something different.

What changed his heart? It says he “saw how He died." He heard him say, "Father, forgive them." He knew He was forgiving those who were responsible for His death. The centurion realized He was forgiving him. He was also forgiving you.

The Bible says that Jesus carried our sins on His own body on that cross. The One you and I have sinned against stands ready to forgive every sin that we have ever committed. He died for our forgiveness.

Then the officer heard Jesus say to a thief on the cross next to Him, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." Jesus has the power to take us to heaven with Him. The day your heart beats for the last time, Jesus is going to say to you, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." Your search ends at the cross of Jesus.

That cross where God's Son died for you is the place where you will finally find God, peace, unloseable love, and eternal life. This could be your day to stand at His cross and know you belong to Him. It's been a long, long search hasn't it? It doesn't have to be any longer. When the Savior on that cross becomes your personal Savior, you have found the key that unlocks it all.