Christ did not say, pick up your lollypop and follow me. He said, pick up your Cross and follow me.
Gosh I could be a Saint if God would only listen to me and send me the Cross of my choosing…
I mean, if I had the choice of what to offer up, I could be a right-royal martyr.
Imagine if I would be able to suffer only the things that I was ready for. Imagine if after years of mental preparation, I was able to accept only the suffering that I had fully planned for. Imagine no unexpected illnesses and no unexpected upsets. Imagine that everything went according to plan…
Imagine if, today I wake up and tomorrow I have a sore foot (and like a little Saint I offer that up). But if me sore foot became increasingly worse and that meant that I needed to deal with chronic pain for the rest of my life, well, that would simply be too much to bear. Or, imagine if I earned enough money to be comfortable, but was willing to offer up never being able to take a holiday because I did not have quite enough money for that. Or, imagine if I could offer up having a child who was uncooperative and disobedient, but not a child who was addicted to drugs.
And I have been thinking about that today. You see it is a very easy thing to choose my own Cross. I will simply choose the easiest and lightest Cross. That is not to say that I will choose an easy thing, but it is to say that I would choose the thing that is – for me – easier to manage. And so, from the outside it might look like I was going to be seated on a throne in Heaven as a result of all my sacrifices, but actually I the merits of my sufferings would be directly correlated to the extent of my suffering. And the extent of my suffering through those sacrifices would be far less than if I accepted the Cross that God choose for me, instead of trying to foist my own Cross at God and trying to force Him to accept my Cross.
And I have been thinking about that. Because Christ did not say, pick up your lollypop and follow me. He said, pick up your Cross and follow me. He did not say, there will be a variety of crosses, please just chose whichever one you want and follow me. Instead, He said, please chose the Cross laid out for you and follow me. And Christ did this through His own example to us. When He accepted His Cross, He did this without reservation. He – God of the Universe – could have obliterated the world in that moment of choice about the Cross. But instead, He bent down and hoisted that hunk of wood onto his poor bloodied shoulders and carried it along the cobbled stress of Jerusalem for hours and hours to the place of His death.
And I have been thinking about that today. For it seems to me that I give myself far too much choice. And it is not a good thing at all.
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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