Three Morphing Miracles

             The Story of Jesus, the gospel Peter preached, was the Story of Jesus’ life, his death, and his resurrection. That life became that death, and that death became that life when Jesus journeyed from Galilee to Golgotha where Jesus was dealt the death-blow of injustice and God dealt out the life-blow of resurrection. 

Then something else remarkable happened. The first followers of Jesus morphed into new people because the Story of Jesus morphed from a culture of death into a culture of life. In particular, one big elephant stood in their room, the cross, and something had to be done about it.  Those who experienced the resurrection-undoing-of-Golgotha morphed the cross.  

Instead of pretending the crucifixion didn’t happen, instead of hiding from it in shame as from a bad family history, the followers of Jesus stared at the cross and watched it morph. The cross morphed from infamy into redemption, from embarrassment into glory, and from tragedy into comedy (more on that below).

Perhaps the least observed miracle of the first followers of Jesus was cross morphing. Those first followers quickly began making the sign of the cross on their heads and hearts, began topping mountains with crosses, began wearing crosses on their neck, and they began painting crosses on walls. Within a few centuries Christians were known for the cross.  Have you ever pondered how weird that morphing really was? Wearing a cross or making the sign of the cross, therefore, must be seen for what it is: the cross was and is an instrument of brutal torture and barbaric punishment. But the Christians morphed the cross from capital punishment into capital importance.