The People of The Cross. Young men refusing to recant their faith in Jesus even through torture and imminent beheading.I am one of the "People of The Cross." The few slights I have experienced over the course of my life because of my faith don't even register on the scale of persecution these men endured.
I ask myself: would I remain true to Jesus under such circumstances?
During the seventh month of my pregnancy with our daughter Amanda, I wrestled through a crisis of faith. This was in the 80's, when ultrasound was relatively new, and my obstetrician ordered one for me. I had studied a lot of biology and human anatomy and kept asking questions about things I saw on the screen that I didn't understand. The sonographer wouldn't answer directly, just kept trying to redirect my attention. Like someone who is avoiding being the bearer of bad news.
We were told to wait (on hard chairs against the wall in the hallway) for the doctor (who was reading the scans back in another room somewhere) to come talk with us. He never came. We were finally sent home to await a call from my obstetrician.
The call brought very bad news. I liked my doctor, he had delivered our other two children and I had confidence in him. But I hung up on the poor man. The news was so painful that I began choking on sobs and felt like I couldn't breath, let alone speak. When I finally caught my breath I expelled it in uncontrollable, anguished wails. It sounded so out of character for me that my five-year-old son laughed, certain this was some sort of bizarre game.
We lost our little Amanda, and I wrestled with God for a long time after we had buried her. It was a crisis of faith like none I had yet experienced. Its fuel was anger. A simple, fierce anger, shrouded in sorrow, at the God who I thought should have fixed this for us.
People of The Cross experience crises of faith. We just do. God brought me through this one and used it to put some steel in my spiritual spine. He turned my sorrow into compassion, my self-pity into empathy for others. Because one thing we all learn about life sooner or later - hard things happen.
The Bible teaches that since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5).
I look carefully at the faces of the young Egyptian men on their knees in the sand. One account says they were singing songs of Jesus there on that beach. I think of the early disciples of Jesus who were martyred for their faith. For me, it is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that Jesus really did die and come alive again. I mean, who would suffer torture and death for something they knew to be false? Having actually spoken, eaten and walked with the resurrected Jesus changed them forever. They saw with their very own eyes that He is who He said He is. They had confidence that eternal life would await them on the other side of death, too. And I think, this must be going through the minds of the orange-clad men on that beach as well.
As we enter the season of lent and look forward to the celebration of Easter, the truth of what Jesus has done for His people takes on even greater significance as I watch world events unfold.
I, for one, feel privileged to be counted, by God's grace, as one of the People of The Cross.
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