01/23/2026
This is a business page, so I do try to keep my personal beliefs to myself.. I really feel the shape our world is in rn that someone needed to hear this.
I received a call last night from a man who asked me to make a metal cross bc the wooden ones keep getting kicked over and broken by the opps. He told me it was for his 18 year old son who was murdered a few months ago.
Curiosity got the best of me & I googled him. He was in a gang, had theft charges, drug charges, child endangerment, & weapons charges. He was murdered in cold blood by one of his friends and left for dead on the side of the road by what was suspected to have been a bad drug deal.
The kid didn't live a life that I agreed with, & I didn't want to make the cross. A voice in my head reminded me that when I was baptized, I was consecrated under St Eligious. Eligious was a metalsmith who did a lot, but one of the main things he did was make sure the poor and misfortunate had proper burials. We stand our own trials, and I realized it wasnt my place to judge . It got me thinking. People can succumb to eviI & make changes in their neighborhood for the worst. On the flip side, we can allow small acts of God's grace to work through us to counter the bad that's been done. I guess thats the meaning of spiritual warfare. I've always heard God works in mysterious ways, but I have learned thats one way God works-through us....one small act of grace at a time.
So I stopped what i was doing & made the cross.
-Matthew
I marked out his name i welded on out of respect for the family.