“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.’” (Matthew 16:24-26).
The world has gone mad.
Now it is perfectly legal in most of the Western World – including Australia – to kill our young and to kill our old and to kill our weak and vulnerable.
Abortion and euthanasia are considered basic human rights – where the strong can overpower the weak.
Now, while I do not judge any person who has participated in any way in these practices, I do pity them and I do pray for them.
In ancient times, weak or sickly or deformed babies were left on mountainsides to die by being eaten by wild animals or from exposure because they were considered a drain on society. When children are taught about this sort of thing in schools in their studies of ancient history, they are often outraged at such injustice and such terrible neglect of the weak. The ancient Spartans commonly left weak or sickly children to die on Mount Sparta because they wished to have an incredibly strong race that had no weakness in it. The Vikings did the same thing.
In each of these examples, there was a valid justifiable reason for killing the weak. In the case of the Spartans, they were afraid of an uprising of their slaves, so they tasked themselves with developing the strongest army in the world at that time so that they would be able to decimate the potential of any uprising at all. The Vikings were similarly afflicted. Living in the far north of Europe, the Vikings lived in a world where food was very hard to come by. The climate meant that it was difficult to grow food. Thus the Vikings were required to go “a-viking” or raiding and trading annually during the summer to collect enough food and wealth to bring back home for their families to have enough food to sustain them through the winter…
And yet – we are still horrified – rightly so – by knowing that people thought it would be okay to leave sick or vulnerable or infant human beings out to die.
These days, we have a different justification. And our justification is the fear of discomfort. People are taught – by our culture – to be afraid of pain or suffering of any kind. If someone is at risk of feeling pain, we are told (by our society) that it would be better that they had no life at all. If someone is at risk of being more restricted in their lives due to having additional needs, our society teaches us that there is simply no point in their even having a life, because a life lived with a struggle is somehow less of a life.
And how terribly evil it is to imagine such a fate as this… A world where discomfort should be banished. And yet our God told us from the very beginning that we would suffer. In the Garden of Eden after the fall of humanity, God said to Eve, “‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children.’” (Genesis 3:16), and to Adam, “‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.’” (Genesis 3:17).
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.’” (Matthew 16:24-26).
So, all of that – that running away from pain and suffering – it is running in the wrong direction… Today I need to turn myself around and pray for the Grace to pick up my cross and follow Him… After all, that suffering is a precious, precious gift from God. It is a sign that I am on the right track…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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