For a good number of years I have had to hand a small cross, carved from olive wood. It's made to fit comfortably while being held in hands clasped in prayer.
It was given to me at a time in my life when there were more burdens than could easily be borne. That happens to all of us sometimes, when the emotional cost of being who you are, and the outgoings of personal investment in the lives of others threatens to overwhelm.
For some it's the incremental demands of the job, or recurring anxiety about family, or the advent of threatened illness, or chronic financial pressures with no easy way out. It doesn't really matter now what my own situation was.
What matters is that one day, sitting at my desk, trying to work out a way to manage impossibly conflicting demands, a friend and colleague came in and said very little. But he placed the palm cross in my hand, saying it might help.
Think about that. How could a small hand carved piece of olive wood, sourced from Palestine, and albeit thoughtfully handed to me in a gesture of kindness I have never forgotten, how could it help? What I needed was a change of circumstances, a lessening of load, or even, God help us, a couple of brilliant ideas of how to fix what I knew deep down I couldn't fix? By the way, "God help us", however pious or defiant the tone, is a prayer.
The number of times I've held that gift in my hand since! You see it isn't the wood, or its shape. But the kindness that gave it, and the originating thought that sent someone looking for it because they were thinking about me, and the unpushy way it was given, - these represent, as a sacrament, exactly what the cross stands for in hearts that have come to understand it.
Olive wood, carved by skilled and practised hands, bought and given away by other hands, and then placed into my hand, a symbol of those other hands so long ago, "hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered..." At a precise time in my life, my own inner suffering was acknowledged by another, and brought into relation with the suffering of God in Christ.
Long before that over worked and lazy cliche, "There are no words", that gesture of kindness demonstrated the kind of care and understanding that make words redundant, and still says the right thing. "And it came to pass", in that moment of gift, that gift of a moment, the equilibrium shifted, and I held in my hand a word from God.
Through those difficult times I began to hold this gift of a cross when praying, and especially when silent because words would not come.The inner shift in my own mind and heart in the days that followed made it possible to work through some of the most difficult weeks in my life. There is something unashamedly and unequivocally Christian about sharing in the sufferings of Christ, and knowing Christ shares all there is to bear of our own suffering.
A hand carved cross, clasped in hands that are praying, is a confession of faith in the God who in Christ, has come to know, eternally know, the broken heart of humanity. All of this is hard to explain. But Paul knew something about what I'm trying to say. "For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows." (2 Cor.1.5) Yes, it's a hard verse. But then, it's a hard life, sometimes. God help us!
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