Cross Of Hope!
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." – Romans 15:13.
+++
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent many years in the freezing cold prison camps of Siberia.
Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during the summer and winter. His life was nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation, which reduced him to a state of despair.
On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him, and he felt there was no reason to keep living, so he gave up!! Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a bench and sat down, knowing that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and if he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners, so he waited.
A moment later, he felt the presence of someone, so he slowly looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him, but the man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the Sign of the Cross and then the man got up and returned to work.
As Alexander stared at the cross in the dirt, his perspective changed and then he remembered that he was only one man against the all-powerful soviet empire. He looked at the cross again and realized that there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than even the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple cross and through the power of the cross, anything was possible.
Alexander, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed, but inside, the cross had given him hope!!
+++
It is that same cross that Alexander looked at that we must look at when we become hopeless!!
“Outside of the cross of Jesus Christ, there is no hope in this world. That cross and resurrection at the core of the Gospel is the only hope for humanity.”
Blessed Day!
+++
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent many years in the freezing cold prison camps of Siberia.
Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during the summer and winter. His life was nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation, which reduced him to a state of despair.
On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him, and he felt there was no reason to keep living, so he gave up!! Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a bench and sat down, knowing that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and if he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners, so he waited.
A moment later, he felt the presence of someone, so he slowly looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him, but the man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the Sign of the Cross and then the man got up and returned to work.
As Alexander stared at the cross in the dirt, his perspective changed and then he remembered that he was only one man against the all-powerful soviet empire. He looked at the cross again and realized that there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than even the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple cross and through the power of the cross, anything was possible.
Alexander, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed, but inside, the cross had given him hope!!
+++
It is that same cross that Alexander looked at that we must look at when we become hopeless!!
“Outside of the cross of Jesus Christ, there is no hope in this world. That cross and resurrection at the core of the Gospel is the only hope for humanity.”
Blessed Day!
Comments
Post a Comment