Daniel Long has put many things into the fire and watched impurities burn away.
He has a kiln in his garage, and as a machinist that sort of thing is both a career and hobby.
But he’d never been put in the flames himself until Oct. 7, 2021. That was the day he found his wife’s SUV upside down on the side of the interstate, and his life turned upside down too.
“She was my absolute best friend from the first time she got in my truck to the morning of Oct. 7,” said Long, who had been married to Rachel for almost 27 years. “We did everything outside of hunting and fishing together.”
He rushed to the scene of the accident after his cousin called and said she had been on the phone with Rachel when she heard a crash.
“How I got there so fast, I do not know,” Long recalled. “A lady in black scrubs came running toward me and stopped me and put both her hands on my shoulders and said, ‘Sir, she is gone.’ I asked where. I assumed she was hurt and [had been] taken to the hospital, but she said again, ‘No, sir, she is gone.’ I fell to my knees.”
Rachel had been a kindergarten teacher, and she was focused on loving her students well and planting seeds of the gospel as they came through her classroom.
Rachel’s crosses
So in the months since her death, Long, a member of Grace Life Baptist Church in McCalla, has worked to carry on her legacy with small metal crosses he forges in the kiln in his garage. He calls them Rachel crosses. As he gives them away he uses them to share Jesus.
“God can take a piece of scrap, heat you up and forge or form you into something of value,” Long explains.
He stamps each cross with his initials, called the “maker’s mark,” and says each person who follows Jesus has His stamp on their lives too.
“Anyone can be reshaped no matter how rusty you are,” Long said. “Jesus can put you on His altar and shape you with His amazing and saving grace.”
More than 350
When he first started making the crosses he thought it would just be a few, but in the eight months since his wife died Long has made and given away more than 350. If the recipient is a nonbeliever, he tells the person not to wait to give his or her life to Jesus. His wife’s death is a poignant reminder that life is short and can be gone in an instant, Long says.
And if the recipient is a believer, he asks the person to use the cross to share the gospel with others.
Long said up until Oct. 7 he would have beaten around the bush asking people where they stood with God, but not anymore.
“Rachel would tell you Friday is not good enough if you die on Thursday,” he said, “So don’t wait.”
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