Fellowship of the Cross

By Dennis Stephan Cole

I just saw the film,  “Do You Believe.”  It touched my heart.  

The film starts with a voice-over from the lead character - a pastor explaining what the Cross is.  My first take was, “Are they telling us the story before showing us?”   

We go to films and read books to be drawn into the story of people. We do not want to be told all up front. We want to be shown and then drawn in. So I waited, watched, and then suddenly, I was surprised!  

I was drawn into their lives. The cross - the symbol of Christianity - is so much more than a symbol.  The filmmakers were making a point. Do You Believe is a great question!  

They take 12 desperate people from all walks of life and place their lives together through circumstance and providence. We are brought into the subtlety of each character’s struggle. That's when I gained another insight into the cross. The Cross is where and how Jesus died.  

Yes, but the cross is my story.  

It is where I can come to the end of me, my strength and die there too. He's there for the lonely, the angry, the frustrated, forlorn and more. In weakness, and not cover up of weakness, He is there. All we need to do is climb up and join. There is fellowship at the end, and when the end is the cross ... the end is The Beginning.  

No one can brag about his or her accomplishments or dwell on failure here, but here we just live, love, and are thankful the cross is home. I do not have to perform here, I can just be. 

I walked out and said to my daughter Stephanie, “Wouldn't it be wonderful if you, me and Mom had an enlarged family?  A bigger family with surrogate grandmas and grandpas, cousins brothers and sisters?”  

Martin Luther King had this dream. It was his cross and his invitation for all of humanity to bring the cross we bear to that same lonely place where people find real fellowship.  His Cross and our crossroad.  

Let’s climb up and encourage one another. Climb "forward and upward."  The cross is not an ideal. No, not at all. It’s not a standard we come up to but a fellowship we come down to.  A place to be "lifted up."  The cross is real because He is for real.