The Cross Is Everywhere

“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” — Luke 9:23 (KJV)

Some people think following Jesus should make life easy. Thomas thought the opposite, and he was honest about it in a chapter called “The Royal Road of the Holy Cross.”

Jesus told his followers to take up their cross daily. Thomas says some kind of suffering is unavoidable for everyone, Christian or not: “Arrange and order everything to suit your will and judgment, and still you will find that some suffering must always be borne, willingly or unwillingly.” Sometimes it is pain in your body, sometimes trouble inside. People will let you down. And, he adds with a wry honesty, “what is worse, you will often grow weary of yourself.”

He makes a sharp point about running away from problems:

“No matter where you may go, you cannot escape it, for wherever you go you take yourself with you and shall always find yourself.”

New school, new friends, new city: you still bring yourself along. So the question is not how to escape every cross, but how to carry it. And here Thomas says something wonderful:

“If you carry the cross willingly, it will carry and lead you to the desired goal.”

Fight it every step and it gets heavier: “If you carry it unwillingly, you create a burden for yourself and increase the load, though still you have to bear it.” Throw one away and “you will find another and perhaps a heavier one.” Carry it with Jesus and, somehow, it starts carrying you.

Thomas also says hard times have a hidden gift. In Book I he writes, “It is good for us to have trials and troubles at times, for they often remind us” that this world is not our final home. And when people don’t think well of us, “then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees our hearts.”

A word of care. Thomas was a monk, and sometimes he writes as if we should go looking for suffering. That is not what Jesus asks. You don’t need to make your life harder on purpose, and you should always get help for pain, illness or anything that is hurting you. Thomas’s best point is simpler: when hard things come, and they will, you don’t carry them alone. Jesus walked this road first, carrying his own cross, for you.

One thing to do this week: name one hard thing in your life right now that you can’t change. Instead of only asking God to take it away, ask him this week to help you carry it with him, and notice whether anything changes in how it feels.