It’s a hard thing I ask of you.
Hard, but not difficult.
I ask you to take up a cross.
Mine was, is, real and hardened, splintering and splintered.
Yours is most likely harder to see, but no less costly.
Yours is not the weight of the world, but at times it may seem so.
It’s in your nature to make nothing into something and something into nothing.
Seek not to find that trap.
I say take up your cross.
Do not think only of laying down coffee or Facebook or chocolate.
I say take up your cross.
Do not only of more reading,
Prayers, services, projects and giving.
Crosses cost everything.
Your tendency is to the
Simple arthimatic, of adding or subtracting one.
You talk often of taking up your cross
Like you do shopping or habits or exercise.
It’s not like that. I speak from experience.
The experience of blood, sweat and tears.
There is glory to come. I see it and live in it.
It is yours; now in part, in full to come.
Cross and glory go together like
Blood, sweat and tears.
So the cross? Your cross?
Made to measure, fitting well.
What do you give up, take on?
What is enough when it demands life, soul, all?
A living sacrifice.
You, here and now.
For ever.
Everything you were, are and will be.
So for 40 days lay down or take up.
Discipline or abstain.
Facebook or chocolate.
Pray, read, worship,
Serve, give, study.
Attend, worship.
By all means.
Do so with
Full hearts and minds.
But do not think that in doing so
You have found a cross.
Those may be good, but are not all.
I ask for your life.
No more, no less.
Each day.
I take what you give gladly for I know it costs.
It costs and hurts and aches and rips.
As it did for me.
40 days, then.
To show the content of your life.
Take up your cross
As I did mine.
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