The Old Rugged Cross

Thank you, you crazy, beautiful humans.  Amidst all of the terrible things that happen, in the middle of the entire European continent being thrown into turmoil by the flight of refugees.  In the midst of rising xenophobia and the noticeable clenching of those whose status quo seems threatened, there is is this guy who started collecting driftwood and making crosses.  At first he just did it for the refugees.  He made crosses from the shipwrecked boats that had brought them across the Mediterranean and where they had suffered.  He gave them to Christians and Muslims alike, and everyone understood the meaning, because everyone had suffered.
Eventually other people noticed that what the carpenter Tuccio was doing was just too beautiful for words.  A church in Milan wanted 150, Pope Francis wanted one, the British Museum wanted one.  One of the curators of the Museum said the cross they now display:

Regularly brings tears to the eyes of those who come to the museum.  It's not because the thing itself is extraordinarily beautiful, it is because the story it connects us to is so very powerful, and painful, and full of suffering, and full of grace.
Tuccio said he was moved to make the crosses because the wood that was washing up on the beaches near his home in Lampedusa Italy was clearly soaked in suffering.  He started doing these little crosses as a gesture of hope and kindness to those who were arriving on his shores.  He was later enlisted by the Pope and a church in Milan to make crosses in remembrance of a specific shipwreck of refugees from Eritrea in November.
If you think that Christianity is dying, you should probably reconsider the evidence.
The church has some problems to be sure, but the message of the cross seems to be alive and well in the world. The notion of God's presence with us in our suffering and the transformation of suffering into victory is all around us.
Even when it makes the news, it gets stuck in human interest stories.
Even when it picks up hundreds of people off the ash heap of the world and gives them hope, it still takes some digging to get to hear it.
I guess it just proves again that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are passing away.
After all, what does some raggedy old wood really have to say about all this tragedy that's going on in the world?
For those who are in Christ, it says all we need, to have hope and to have life.