Carry Your Cross Daily…!”

“Carry Your Cross Daily…!”(Lk.9:23-25)
Generally the five day per week working days is Monday to Friday; excepting national and religious holidays. While we say everything is under control in English Cameroon, Monday has become a “no activity day; such that whoever dares to go to work does so at his/her risk.
The Decalogue states as law that we should “remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy by not working on that day because God rested on the Sabbath day. So he “blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy”(Ex.20:8-11).
The Sabbath day of rest was liberating to employees to the chagrin of employers.
God may have blessed the Sabbath day to be a day of rest, but he is still working. Imagine that God is resting on the Sabbath! What becomes of the petitions, supplications and prayer requests that we make on Sunday – which is the Christian Sabbath equivalent? It would mean that there is no need to pray on Sunday, since God would only answer on Monday.
In Luke Jesus says, “If anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross ‘daily’ and follow me…” While the other synoptic gospels mention this saying of Jesus, only Luke includes the word “daily.”
We pray to God daily and often at very odd hours; unholy hours that we ourselves would not be ready to attend to anyone who needs our help!
Since God attends to us at any time we call on him, so too discipleship cannot be a five day per week work pattern. It cannot be a six day per week work pattern either. Discipleship is daily; it is a process, it is ongoing; unendingly!
During the planting of a cross on a grave we often say that the cross is symbolic of the deceased carrying his cross to follow Jesus. This is a seemingly faulty interpretation.
The audience whom Jesus was addressing understood him in context. Whoever was to be executed on a cross had to carry his cross to the place of execution.
Within our contexts, carrying one’s cross to follow Christ means discipleship is not a call to comfort. Discipleship is the readiness to die in service for the sake of the gospel. Discipleship is abnegation – surrendering your will, heart, soul and all you are to the service of God. Discipleship is penitence, repentance and making a U-turn back to the Lord! Discipleship is our utmost for His Highest!
Dear friend, “what good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” Absolutely nothing!Why would you even dream of gaining the whole world?*
The good that is, is to daily seek, find and know Christ more and more and the power of his resurrection.
And knowing Christ more and more is through selfless service to those created in the image of God!
Weekend prayer: Holy Spirit, give me daily the ability to identify my cross and the willingness to carry it and follow Christ. Amen!
Have a blessed weekend! Peace be with you!
Prayer point: Pray for proper understanding of carrying one’s cross in today’s context.
Rev Babila Fochang.