Carry the Cross

Read this passage from Matthew 10:38-39:

If you don't go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don't deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you'll find both yourself and me.

A friend of mine delivered a talk on an Emmaus walk yesterday. Prior to giving a talk, you change into a "suit and tie" outfit, and then change back into casual clothes after the talk. After we "prayed him out," and he was preparing to return to the sleeping area to change, we all remembered that the cross in the chapel needed to be moved to the Sanctuary. It's a large cross, about as tall and me. My friend said, "I'll carry the cross so I can change."

He was being literal - the Sanctuary is in the same area as the sleeping rooms, but when you think about it, it was a spiritual statement, too.

Carrying a cross will lead to our transformation. Where else can carry a heavy burden lighten our load? Where else is it that death means new life? Nowhere. Christianity is backward. Christ leads us to carrying our crosses, not so that we will suffer and be heavy burdened, but so that we can be transformed into a new creation.