The Driftwood Cross
Hello — This musing was set going by a cross, the driftwood cross in the picture above. It’s about 2 metre/6 foot tall and fixed just above eye level, to one side, on the wall of our church. It’s the wall that faces us when we are together for our worship meetings so we get plenty of occasions and time to take it in.
The first time at first glance, to me it just seemed a bit of a mess, disturbing rather than attractive. Then, when I stopped looking at the pieces of wood and branches individually and looked at the arrangement as a whole, to my wonder I started to see a human figure stretched out and at the very top a crown and at the bottom small human figures worshipping. It was no longer just bits of dead wood but a living tableau full of meaning.
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Then my mind started to ‘go to sea’ and I thought about all those bits and branches bobbing about in the ocean and eventually landing up on our local beaches. From where had they come? How long had they been bobbing along? What kind of trees were they from? I thought about how Eve had found them, collected them and then connected and interconnected them on the cross. What had motivated her? Where had the idea come from? Before they were carried to and fro by waves, winds and currents. Now they were aboard a cross shaped ship moored in a safe, sheltered harbour.
Before becoming a Christian I used to wonder, Why did people go on about a man being crucified two thousand years ago? It’s horrible, why think about it? Why talk about it?
More than three thousand years ago soon after Moses had led the Israelites out of their captivity in Egypt they came to a place in the wilderness where there was water but it was too bitter to drink. The Lord showed Moses a tree which when cast into the waters made the waters sweet. And so it is today that the tree of life, The Cross of Jesus Christ takes away the bitterness of death that permeates the waters of this wilderness we are passing through.
The Lord Jesus, speaking beforehand of his crucifixion, said that when he was lifted up he would draw many people to himself. And so it is that his people talk about and think much about The Cross, for therein there is life and great sweetness.
Eve, who was God’s workwoman in the making of our driftwood cross was, with her husband and their two children, a missionary in India for nearly four years before she became ill with debilitating fibromyalgia and they had to return to the UK. While they were with us here in sunny seaside Lancashire she created the driftwood cross, despite the difficulties of chronic fatigue and muscle pains that she still has. The family is now lifting up The Cross over in sunny seaside Wales.
Thank you Eve for our/your drift wood cross.
