Page 7 - Harnett Life Spring 2021

“The Bible teaches us that Jesus died on a cross. Jesus is Lord,
and our belief in Him and the cross and its meaning is our way
to Him,” he shared.

According to Never Thirsty, a nonprofit ministry dedicated to
Bible knowledge, the significance of the cross is not its design,
construction or purpose, but its symbolic meaning. The online
resource states that the cross symbolizes the death and resur-
rection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. While a symbol, the
cross was also an actual artifact, one that Ziady chose to create
his rendition of in May 2019.

Made from driftwood, he gathered during a hurricane cleanup
at one of the large reservoirs, the cross is similar in material
and size to one he saw while watching a Billy Graham video.
The show gave Ziady the idea, and as a creative person, the
brainstorm leaped from head to hands quickly. Shying away
from referring to himself as an artist, Ziady prefers the label
wood craftsman to describe the skill set he learned from his
father and on-the-job experience in earlier construction work.
He has been honing his craft ever since.

Describing the process of building the cross, he said, “The
driftwood came from multiple types of trees, from pine to
hardwoods. I had a single axle dump truck about ¾ of the way

Ziady and his son-in-law, Shawn Dunlap, begin the process
of screwing driftwood to the cross frame.

From the tattered remains of Hurricane Florence, Harnett
County’s Mark Ziady built a symbol of hope and peace. The
weather of September 2018 brought destruction and demoli-
tion to the Carolinas, but Ziady repurposed some of the dam-
aged debris into something good, something very good, indeed.
He created a cross.

A woodworker since his teens, Ziady is the maker of the rough-
ly 10-foot tall, 6-foot wide wooden cross erected on the site of
Miller’s Lawn & Landscaping of Erwin. As vice president of
operations at Miller’s, he wanted to display the project at his
office so more people could see it and perhaps appreciate it, he
said. Located off 421 at 401 E. Jackson Blvd., the store has a
large amount of vehicle traffic coming into and out of Dunn.
There the handcrafted cross has high visibility and stands in a
place of prominence.

The cross, the symbol of the worldwide Christian faith after
Jesus Christ’s death on one in the year A.D. 33, likewise has a
prominent place in Ziady’s life as a Christian man.

Overhead view of the completed cross, a labor of love.
Harnett Life ~ Spring 2021