Are you carrying THE Cross?

I’m sure some of you have already seen this little cartoon strip making its rounds in our Inboxes. I think it’s quite impossible not to be struck with this comic strip, right? I know it’s going to be easy for all of us to point out certain areas or situations in our life right now that we could call our “cross” – a sickness… a financial burden… pressure at work… a family problem… a heartache… We have all been guilty of asking the Lord to cut off at least little bits of these burdens we call “our cross”. The message of this cartoon strip can then be simplified into saying that our “cross” actually prepares us for that dip on the road that only God can see. So given the fact that we are all suffering in the workplace, going through a shaky marriage, hardly making ends meet, dealing with loneliness and emptiness, paying off our mortgages, hurting in our family, etc… – and ACCEPTING ALL OF THESE CIRCUMSTANCES DESPITE THE PAIN – Does this mean that we are already responding to God’s call to “take up your cross”? Are we already suffering like Christ and therefore be rewarded?

Although we are commended for bearing the pain of unjust suffering (1 Peter 2:19) unfortunately, this is not what “carrying our cross” just means. All of the problems that we refer to as the “crosses to bear” in our life cannot compare to the CROSS that Jesus carried and asked us to carry with Him. Taking up our cross is not merely accepting the temporary pain that we are experiencing in this world, like those situations we have mentioned earlier. When Jesus said “…take up your cross and follow Me” in Matthew 6:24, he wasn’t referring to our human sufferings as the “cross”. The Real Cross is to voluntarily participate in Christ’s sufferings as He carries out His redemptive purposes (Phil 3:10) What then are Christ’s sufferings? Did he suffer the way we “think” we are suffering through money, work, or earthly relationships? To suffer like Christ did is to go against the current of this sinful world. To suffer like Him is to bear the burden of the person’s salvation next to us.

The cross is not merely our human suffering. The cross that could have made the man cross the gulf is the Christian Life. And the other side of the mountain is Eternal Life. The only way to cross is thru THAT CROSS! The cross is Christ!

Now let us ask ourselves, ARE WE REALLY CARRYING THE CROSS IN OUR LIFE?