The Ongoing Power of the Cross

Japan's tsunami is still making news.  The nuclear problem is ongoing.  New videos of the tsunami hitting Japan are still cropping up.  The destructive power of what happened still reverberates.  What doesn't make the news and what doesn't come to the forefront is where protective measures worked and where lives were saved.

In the devastating tsunami of December 2004, we did not hear about Pondicherry, India.  That's because its 300,000 inhabitants were saved from those killer waves by something that started 250 years before.  Pondicherry was a French trading port on the Indian Ocean.  The French wanted to protect this rare outpost that was surrounded by the British Empire so they began to build a massive seawall, putting together huge boulders along a 1.25 mile long stretch of ocean front.  Then they kept building and reinforcing it until 1957.  Worked stopped then but the protection the wall provided saved Pondicherry in 2004.  Just beyond the protection of the wall, 600 people drown in the tsunami.  The protection of the wall did not make the news but that does not mean it was not effective.

The cross of Christ is no longer making news but it still has the power to save. It still is changing lives; it is still saving lives. Something happened then, that saves us now and keeps on saving us in the future.  This Palm Sunday we come to look at the cross, what happened there and what is still happening now because of what Jesus did there.

For the journey...