Common Ground

This third message in our Faith Out of Africa series is all about carrying the cross, literally. When our Lord, weakened by being flogged could carry his cross no longer, the Roman Soldiers found Simon from Africa in the crowd along the road to Calvary and forced him to carry the cross for Jesus the rest of the way. Long before Paul would say, “I am crucified with Christ” the very first person to carry the cross was an African who has a story to tell. His two sons became followers of Jesus and Paul talks about Simon’s wife in another passage which can only get me excited for heaven when I think about how the Gospel spread like wildfire because the soldiers picked this man to help Jesus. How about you? What does it mean to voluntarily carry the cross of Jesus? While Simon was forced and compelled by the sword, we have agency in the voluntary surrender of our lives to this convicted Messiah. In this first Sunday of Lent we will look to the cross, we will look to Simon, and we will look at the brutality of the R