My name is Simon.
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We’d saved and scrimped for years for this once-in-a-lifetime trip to Jerusalem for Passover. The Jews in our home city on the north coast of Africa, Cyrene, had taught us about the One True God, and we’d been worshipping him since our boys were babies. When the chance came to celebrate the Feast in Israel, we jumped at it.
After ten nausea-inducing days on a cargo ship, the Israelite city of Joppa lay just off the bow. I’d never been more excited, and my boys could hardly sit still. As we neared the city gate, we could hear an unsettling chaos that sent a chill through my bones. “They’re crucifying that man Yeshua. He claims he is the Son of God!”
Yeshua. I’d heard that name back home. Some said he was the Messiah we had waited for for so long. My heart pounding, I grabbed the boys’ hands and raced to the street, pushing our way to the front.
I saw the Man, blood dripping down his face, angry open wounds on his back, stumbling as he tried to carry the cross on which he would be tortured until he died—which often took days.
“You!” I froze as a snarling Roman soldier pointed his whip at me. “You! Carry this.”
In fear for my own life, I obeyed. I approached the Man, and trying to injure him any more than he already was, lifted the wooden beam from his shoulders to mine.
The Man was near death already, but he looked at me as if he knew every moment of my whole life, everything I’d ever done or said or thought, and still loved me.
At that moment, I knew I would do anything he asked, follow him anywhere, sacrifice anything, no matter what it cost me.