Between the Crosses

Funny how a phrase can stick in your mind. Funny how it can take on life in new ways as it percolates in your subconscious.

Between the crosses…

Think of Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, commanding an army outpost hospital in France during W. W. I. Following the death of his young friend, 22 year old Lieutenant Alexis Helmer of Ottawa in May of 1915, he penned Canada’s most famous poem which begins;

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,

But on the 28th of January, 1918, McCrae himself died of pneumonia in the very field hospital he commanded. Between the crosses of Helmer and McCrae, there were less than three years, but in those three years, Doctor John McCrae probably saved the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands others.

Between the crosses, life happens.

Between the crosses of Jesus and the two death-row convicts executed with him, stood soldiers, grief stricken friends, and a broken-hearted mother; real people with real feelings, and real lives. In the air between those crosses their three unfortunate occupants held a strange conversation, and as a result of that redemption and grace ocurred.

Between the crosses in our lives, life exists, but we seldom know where or when the crosses will come.

Between the crosses we need to make the most of life.

Posted by Carman