A Father's
Signature: The Heart in the Cross
And I
looked, and, lo,
a Lamb
stood on the mount Sion,
and with
him an hundred forty and four thousand,
having his
Father's name written in their foreheads.
--
Revelation 14:1
Two years ago, there was a wedding
down at our neighborhood pond, uniting the daughter of some dear friends and her
sweetheart, a strong, tall football player. His dad, equally tall and athletic,
sets a wonderful Christian example of soft-spoken kindness.
For the wedding, the bridegroom and
his dad built a big, beautiful cross out of sturdy wood. The ceremony wasn't
going to be in a church, but these families wanted to make it clear what the
marriage was going to be based on. And Who.
A few days before, with help from
friends, they erected the cross, making sure it was level. The groom, his
father, the bride's father, my husband and another neighbor held it aloft with
the utmost care, like the statue of Iwo Jima, setting it in concrete.
Some ladies added some long, white
sheer fabric that gracefully waved in the breeze. The effect was breathtaking.
It was the prettiest wedding ever. They
left the cross up for weeks afterward, for another wedding was coming up. The
land belonged to our neighborhood association, and they had permission.
Whenever I passed by, I gazed at it. The cross made me feel good.
Then one terrible day, it was gone.
Someone had come in the night, and
chain-sawed it down.
Reportedly, an angry person had
called the local police three times to complain about the cross. He was told it
was on private property, out of police jurisdiction.
So the person had just gone in there
and cut it down, a couple of feet above the concrete base, leaving an ugly
stump. The cross lay on the ground.
The father of the bride and the
father of the groom were shocked. How could anybody feel that way about a
cross? How could anybody mutilate such a positive, uplifting statement?
I wanted to organize a mob, like in
the movie Frankenstein, march on
whoever did it with torches and pitchforks, and make them glue it back together
and apologize.
God! How could you let Your Son's
Cross be humiliated like this?
But the two fathers decided not to make
a stink. They picked up the cross, took it to the bride's parents' nearby home,
and erected it in their back yard.
A darling granddaughter has been
born of that beautiful wedding, and she had her first Easter egg hunt around
that cross this past spring.
The two dads and everybody else felt
sad that somebody could harbor so much hate over something that was all about
love. I was still mad that the vandal didn't get punished or made to pay
restitution for the property damage. But oh, well.
All of us had looked at the stump of
the cross down at the pond 100 times . . . maybe 1,000.
But recently, the mother of the
bride looked a little closer, and saw something:
There's a heart in the wood!
It's a natural knot on the corner of
the stump. A heart! Plain as day!
It must have been there all along.
But nobody saw it. Until now.
When I saw it, a thrill ran through
me. I recognized our Father's signature. It was the heart in the Cross! Still
there! All my anger at the vandal was wiped away. Here's why:
You can criticize the cross. You can
file a lawsuit against it. You can complain to the cops. You can cut it down.
You can burn it, mutilate it, stomp on it, break it into a million pieces.
But you can never wipe away its true
meaning. It's the Father's heart - the Father's love.
I hope all dads remember that. Your
love for your children is part of you forever. Nothing can ever stop it or
wreck it or take it away. Not trouble, not pain, not even death. It's
permanent. It's forever. That love is a part of you, just as it's a part of
them. Always.
The same thing goes for our heavenly
Father and His Son, despite the Cross, and because of it.
It was there all along . . . and
it's there to stay. †
