Crosses on the Roadside

This afternoon I was traveling with a buddy of mine and happened to see one of those memorial spots on the roadside where a person lost their life. I am sure that you have seen them. Many places along the highway and interstate, there are crosses with pictures, flowers, sometimes even teddy bears and stuffed animals. It is so unfortunate that people do lose their lives so frequently in automobile accidents, but today this one spot made me question something.


Have you ever pondered why you don't ever see a Buddha, a mini- mosque, a totem pole, even some types of animals, or any other symbol that represents a world "religion"? Me neither! Today I really started thinking about this.

Perhaps everyone of these people that tragically lost their lives had family members who believed in and trusted Jesus, but I seriously doubt that. Could it be that the cross is just the universal sign of death? That is quite possible, but I think it goes much deeper. I strongly believe, and the Bible teaches, that everyone has an understanding at some level of who God is, because God has shown us all (see Romans 1:19-20).


Certainly, everyone, whether they admit it or not, has to at least want to believe in their hearts that there is a heaven and there is a God who desires something better for His creation. I would speculate that the crosses on the roadsides represent the fact that humanity has the truth before them and deep down inside, especially in light of a lost loved one, that there MUST be a hope that the cross represents. After all, IT IS a universal sign of death! But, it also represents to us that there is One who conquered death through the resurrection and that He lives to this very day, and will live throughout eternity!

Not everyone who places a cross on the roadside is a born-again believer! Yet deep within their souls, as they drive that cross into the ground, marking the spot of tragedy, their hearts cry out for a hope that there is in fact an afterlife and that Jesus is somehow involved in caring for the one who died.


I am not sure if I like the crosses on the roadside because it would be like having little gas chambers, or lethal injections all along the roads today. The cross was an instrument of death for the most heinous of criminals, but God himself became flesh so that we would not have to live eternally separated from Him! Though I may not really like it, I certainly understand it, because I would want to have a cross marking the site where my loved one passed on in tragedy.

Just think about it though; why the cross? Why not a little Buddha guy sitting there with his legs crossed so a passerby could stop and rub his belly? Why not some other marking that represents Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Baha'i faith, etc.? Because none of them have the promise of a peaceful afterlife! None of them can make the claim of a risen Savior! None of them can hope for an eternity spent without pain, or tear, or any heartache at all! None of them can for a moment consider what it could be like to worship a matchless King throughout the ages yet to come! None of them!

So the cross on the roadside offers the family peace in a terrible time! Those little crosses on the roadside offer a representation of hope that there really is a God! A God who humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross; out of the purest humility and love possible and now gives life everlasting to those who will believe in Him with all of their hearts and trust Him for life!

Those crosses represent the tragedy that the loved one experienced, that the family experienced, that God himself experienced, and what we experience if we turn away from the One who gave himself for us! Yet they also offer hope, peace and the fact that all of us, deep within the soul, yearn for a relationship with the One who created us and desires to love us through eternity!


Crosses on the Roadside, give it some thought!