They forced a man coming in from the country, who was passing by, to carry Jesus’s cross. He was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. 15:21
So many of life’s most defining moments happen we are least expecting them. Simon was a Jewish man and an African from Cyrene. This was a district in North Africa, in modern-day Libya, so he was far from home in Jerusalem. He likely was there, from out of town, for the Passover celebration. And, by the sovereignty of God, Simon just happened to be passing by at the very moment when Jesus was being crucified and in need of someone to carry His cross. He had no opportunity to refuse, as he was forced into service… and just like that, this African was swept up into the greatest and most defining moment of all time.
When he arrived at the crucifixion site he likely dropped the heavy crossbeam (over 50kg) from exhaustion and realized that he was covered in the condemned man’s blood. That man (Jesus) had been carrying the cross beam before him and He had been flogged 39 times so the blood was everywhere. As Simon tried to catch his breath from the long walk with the heavy cross, he likely stood in horror and watched them crucify this condemned man named Jesus. We don’t know what Simon thought, how much he understood, or what he might have said. We do know that he saw a sign above this man’s head which said He was “the King of the Jews,” and we know that Simon never thought this would happen when he left home from Africa.
That is how life is. We never know what tomorrow will hold and if something will happen that will change us forever. We are pretty sure it changed Simon. This verse mentions his two sons, Alexander and Rufus, as if the readers of Mark would know who they were. It is a safe assumption that Simon believed in Christ that day and that he raised his sons to be believers, who became known to the rest of the church by the time Mark wrote his gospel. Romans 16:13 mentions a Rufus in the church at Rome; perhaps this is the same Rufus? We don’t know much more except that his life was changed when he least expected it. Others were passing by that day… “Those who passed by were yelling insults at him…” (15:29) Somehow they missed the truth but Simon did not. Are you prepared for God to intervene in your life today in an unexpected way? We rarely have any warning but we must always be ready and watching with spiritual eyes so that we don’t miss what the Lord is doing all around us “as we pass by.”
