Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Cross

This morning I was preparing for our Easter services and decided to go ahead and move the cross out of storage to the sanctuary. I really didn't expect it to be so difficult.

There were several crosses in our storage shed across the street. One was tall, and pretty flimsy looking, another was just small. The one that looked most life-sized was thick and splintered - it looked most like what my perception of the cross must have been like.

The cross was awkward to carry. It may have been 70-80 pounds, not light by any means, but doable. I looked at it for a few seconds trying to figure out how to maneuver it without getting more splinters in my hands and arms than I had to.

I carried the cross about 15 feet to the back of my truck. At first I thought about all the people who saw me from North Main. What did they think about the guy carrying the cross? Then my mind jumped to something completely different. I started thinking about the few times in my life that I felt like I gave everything to someone or a group of people only to find myself completely rejected and shunned by them. As I hoisted the cross in the back of my truck I thought about my own sin, how too many times in my life I've treated Jesus the same cruel way some others had treated me.

My thoughts then turned to Matthew 16:24 where Jesus tells me I have to take up my cross and follow Him. I've been trying to wrap my mind around that for a while, but today I grasped it a little bit more. It involved a lot of effort in carrying a cross - even if it was just for 15 feet. It involved getting splinters that will be annoying for a couple of days to come. It also involved some sympathizing with the emotional pain Jesus went through as he "endured the cross, scorning it's shame."

I don't in any way want to compare what took me 15 minutes this morning to what Jesus did for us on the cross. But I feel like this morning I've been reminded in a very tactile (even though miniscule) way of what Jesus went through for me.

When I got back to the church Daryl, a new employee of North Side, ran up to help me carry the cross to the sanctuary. Yes, the wonderful thing is that Jesus does not ask us to carry the cross alone.