First Impressions, Last Goodbyes, and a Two Foot Wooden Cross

This last week while carrying my cross, I was not approached by a single stranger asking why I have it or what it means. Most likely because I have such a muscular and intimidating frame. My friends and coworkers on the other hand, have been full of questions. Sadly, most of them were just trying to be funny.

Here is a list of all the questions I was asked this week:

Why is there a giant cross on your back?

What uh, whatcha got there?

Why do you have a cross?

Are you carrying around a roadside cross? Cause that's a really sad thing to carry around.

Is that one of those things they put on the side of the road after a car accident?

Who died? (With a smug look on my face I answered, "Jesus. But on the third day he rose again.")

What kind of powers does it have?

If I touch Adrian with it, will it burn him?

You made this? Is it heavy? Do you really take it everywhere with you? Do you have to sleep with it? Do you shower with it? Do you take it into the bathroom with you? (Makes a sour face) If you lose it will you go to Hell?

Are you embarrassed of it?

Have people been asking you about it?

Have any Jews gotten mad at you yet?

If he didn't mean it literally, why are you doing it?

Have you converted anyone yet?

Where do you have to take it?

Now, even though most of the questions I was asked were jokes, it wasn’t completely fruitless. I was able to have a lot of conversations about the reasoning behind this project with my friends and coworkers.

And God taught me something else…

You see, Monday was my last day at Levi’s. The whole night it was a running joke that my coworkers were taking mental photographs of random moments to remember me by. At the end of the night, as my coworkers and I were walking to our cars, one of my coworkers made the comment, “There he goes. We’ll always have this mental image of him walking away with a giant cross on his back.”

How fitting is it that the last time most of them will ever have seen me, I had a two foot wooden cross slung over my shoulder? 

Then, on Tuesday morning, I worked my first day at Costco. As I walked into the warehouse at 6A.M.—cross slung over my shoulder—the first thing a lot of them noticed about me was the two foot wooden cross on my back.

Its funny how this project fell on the week of both my last day at Levi’s and my first day at Costco. Because of this timing, some peoples' last memory of me will be me walking away with a big wooden cross on my back, and others' first impressions are me walking up, also with a cross on my back.

This is how our lives are supposed to be aren’t they? Not just when we have radical assignments from our Christian school. We are always supposed to live in a way that—as boldly as a two foot wooden cross—causes The Cross to be both the first thing people notice when they meet us, and the last thing they remember when we say goodbye.