Nita Evans
In the year 2007, my husband Dave and I decided to have a sunroom added onto the back of our home. We wanted three sides of this room to have floor to ceiling sliding glass doors so we could enjoy watching the animals that ran around in our backyard.
Just past our property line is woods and then Hawcreek flows by on the other side of the woods.
Shortly after deciding to go ahead and have the room added on, we residents of Everroad Park East were told by the city that a section of the People Trail was going to come through. It would be located on the other side of our backyard property lines between the Griffa Avenue homes and the woods along Hawcreek.
Later that summer, our new sunroom was built and shortly after that, the People Trail came through behind our house just as we were told it would. With this section completed, we now had many people walking, riding bikes and jogging past our property as they enjoyed using the trail.
A few days after the trail came through, we were sitting in our new sunroom enjoying what we had hoped we would be able to see, which was the woods, the birds and little critters scurrying across our back yard. As I sat there, I pondered the answer to a question I had been asking myself.
The question was one that I found myself asking often, and it was this, “With all of this beauty and opportunity because of the blessings God has bestowed on our family through the years, how can we use our property to make an impact on our beloved city of Columbus, Indiana for the cause of Christ?”
I then had a thought which I immediately shared with Dave. I said, “Honey, how’s about us putting three large crosses within our property line, right there by the trail?”
For some passersby, this could possibly be their last opportunity to come face to face with what Jesus was willing to do for them when He died on the cross at Calvary. One last chance to accept Him if they had not already done so.
Dave agreed with me that this would be a good thing for us to do and he and a neighbor constructed the crosses shortly thereafter. Though Dave was in stage three Alzheimer’s disease at the time, he was still able to help do this with our neighbor’s help.
The two end crosses represent the two criminals who were hung alongside Jesus. Remember, one scoffed at Him, but the other defended Him and asked that Jesus would remember him when He came into His Kingdom. Jesus replied to him, “I assure you, today, you will be with Me in Paradise.”
These crosses are 9 feet high, slant at an outward angle and are white in color. Each has a total of three railroad spikes driven through the wood approximately where a person’s two hands and feet would have been nailed onto the cross.
The middle cross is 10 feet high, is straight up and painted an orangish cream color with three spikes driven through it as well. This cross represents where Jesus was crucified.
Even if you didn’t know the biblical and historical account about the crucifixion of Jesus and the three crosses, when you see them, your eyes immediately go to the middle cross. The cross of Jesus!
Our newly constructed crosses garnered attention right away.
The very next year, Columbus was hit with the flood of 2008 and the inside of our home received 39 inches of sludge and water and our new sunroom received 42 inches.
In all the rooms, except the sunroom, the walls up to the ceiling and the floors had to be removed along with our possessions and taken to the end of the driveway to be hauled away to the city dump.
In other words, all rooms except the sunroom were completely destroyed and had to be rebuilt. It was a different story, however, for the three crosses.
A couple of weeks or so after the flood hit, we received a call from Harry McCawley at The Republic and he said he wanted to come and talk with us. He had heard about our crosses and wanted to know more about them.
Subsequently, Harry wrote an article titled, “Message of the cross survives flood”. Here are a few excerpts from it.
“… (T)he crosses were still standing. They just show us that Christ is with us. Just like before, Nita said.
“When she and her husband got their first post-flood look at the crosses, they saw weeds and two hoses on the crossbars but the water was too deep for them to try to remove them.”
“Days later, they looked out and saw that the crosses were clear of debris. Someone had cared to clean them off, she said.”
Harry McCawley also said that the crosses were a “mute testimony to the crucifixion of Christ and two others at Calvary.”
So, what is the message of our three crosses? John 10:10 reads, “… I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
I will close this column, today, the same as Harry closed his on that day 15 years ago:
“And when people return to their walks and rides on the People Trail, they will have the chance to get the Evanses’ message.”
Nita Evans hosts “The Chat with Nita Evans,” which airs Saturday mornings from 9 to 10 on WYGS-91.1 FM, and can also be streamed from its website at wygs.org/the-chat. Send comments to [email protected].
