Pick up what?

This week in our scripture from John 8, Jesus gives the Disciples a command. To us this command would have not seemed so weird but to them it would have been absolutely ludicrous. He tells them to shoulder their cross and carry it daily. The cross to them was not something that was tattooed on the arm of a professional basketball player or worn around the neck of a stylish debutant. It was an instrument of pain, suffering and death. It was the Romans choice of execution because it was slow. painful and utterly humiliating. The cross was not glorified it was despised. To pick up a cross would be like saying pick up your lethal injection or electric chair. The questions to the Disciples is what does this mean? I think that today when we think about this command, we figure that it means that pain and suffering must take place in our life. The truth is that for some people that may be the case. In some cases we will lose our life for the one that died on the cross. But the truth of this statement may be more in the shoulder daily part of the sentence than the focus being on the cross. This verse calls that everyday we submit to the will of Christ. It means that we put aside our selfish agendas. It means that we put others first. It means that we must bear others burden and engage in their suffering. the reason that we are remind to do it daily is because it does not take much for us to walk away from our first love.

The other part of this verse is that we can return to the cross daily and remember what Christ did for us. It is at the Cross that Jesus died for us. It is here that we can leave our guilt and sin. To turn to Jesus means that we can not do it on our own. This instrument of death has really become a instrument of hope. The other observation of the cross is that it is empty. It no longer holds our Savior. The punishment was carried from the cross and was buried. When Christ arose from the death our sin was gone. God wants us to remember daily that he loved us so much that he sent his son. Join us this week as we look at how shouldering your cross will help you to have not only a closer walk with Christ but will allow you to view an instrument of death as an instrument of hope and encouragement