Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.  Philippians 1:6

 

Individuals who are deprived of their freedom, who are subjected to harassment or brain-washing day after day, sometimes accept falsehood as truth.  Perhaps you will recall that even John the Baptist, imprisoned in dark Machaerus, began to wonder if Jesus was really the Christ. Only months before, he had actually baptized Jesus; but struggling with doubt and depression, he asked his disciples to find Jesus and ask, “Are you really the Messiah or should we look for another?”

One of my heroes, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, faced a dark season during his long imprisonment in the Gulag. In a conversation with the late U.S. Senator, Jesse Helms, Solzhenitsyn told the following story. As the months turned into years, which slowly and painfully dragged on and on, Solzhenitsyn began to wonder if he would ever be free again. He admitted that he knew his thinking was fuzzy but he began to ponder taking his life to put an end to the ordeal.  But then he realized, no, that is not what God wanted. Put that idea out of his mind.

Then he began thinking that if someone shot him, he would not have taken his life, and he finally decided this would be his way out. He decided on the place and the time. When the men were assembled he sat in the front—in plain view of the guard who held a gun. “I will run towards the edge, and he will shoot me in the back,” he thought.  He took his place as planned, and then, to his surprise, another man—someone he had never seen before in this place—came and sat down in front of him, and then, reaching to the side where Solzhenitsyn could see, slowly drew a cross in the dirt.

“A cross!” thought Solzhenitsyn. “I cannot do it,” and to his surprise he was unexpectedly released three days later. (As related by Adriane Rogers, who told the story, as it was told to him by Senator Jesse Helms on his TV program, October 10, 2004).

In talking about the incident, he said that he considered the possibility that God had sent an angel to stop his apparent demise. Who knows? I do know this: The New Testament book of Hebrews says clearly that angels are ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who are heirs of salvation.

There are those times when God does intervene, sending an angelic messenger to keep us, as the Psalmist wrote, lest we dash our foot against a stone.  Have I had those times? Not to my knowledge, but, I have to tell you, more than once I have prayed, “Lord, just send an angel tonight to keep watch while I sleep,” remembering that just one angel destroyed 185,000 of the army of Sennacherib.

There is one thing, however, that is always there—the power of the cross, which casts its ongoing shadow across my path.  Nothing is more central to the whole scope of God’s care and redemption than is the figure of a cross. It tells me of God’s great love and also as serves as a reminder of the tremendous cost which brought God’s only son to Golgotha outside the walls of Jerusalem on that dark day. As Sam Jones once put it, “The cross is a symbol of God’s heart-break over a world that is gone astray.”

A simple cross drawn in the dirt of a Soviet work-camp-prison was enough to help a desperate man realize God still valued his life.

The cross has never lost its power or its place. Remember the cross when you despair and think that your life is no longer worth living. It’s where God meets you, and you find His life to go on. Yes, thank God for the encouragement of a cross. That symbol will never change. It points the way to heaven.

Resource reading: Philippians 1.