#each day

Trump at the state dinner:

We had a very sick country one year ago. Today we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. In fact nobody is even questioning it. Is there a greater embarrassment to America than trump.

“Take up your cross daily and follow me.”

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear that? Good Friday. With a bloodied, beaten Jesus carrying His cross to His impending death.

It sounds like a call to be like Jesus in a moment of great crisis – when martyrdom stands clearly before us. Where the choice is to deny Christ or to be killed.

The first clue that I’ve got it wrong? The word, “daily.” Why?

Good Friday is a one-time thing. Martyrdom? It’s not something that I can do again tomorrow.

But “taking up the cross” is something Jesus wants you and I to do daily, so that we can be free to follow Him. So that we can be free to become who God made us to be.

So, what is Jesus is talking about? What is this “cross?”

It varies from person to person and from day to day. Because the things that try to get between us and God are different. And they change.

What makes this hard is that the things that come between us and God? It’s not just the obvious stuff, like the 10 Commandments or denying Christ to avoid being killed. Because you and I are vulnerable to just about anything getting between us and God.

From things we like, to things we don’t like, to things that don’t really matter, and even the general busyness of life. Our cross, our struggle?

As St. Basil puts it, our struggle is with “the obstacles springing from the habits of life.”

The things that are rushing at us as we start a random Wednesday is September. That’s the level that we’re working on here.

So here’s the plan, and it comes from C.S. Lewis,

It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals.

And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.

And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

If we want the freedom that comes from following Jesus. If we want the joy that comes with being who God made us to be. If we want to be ready for the more obvious stuff.

Then this is what we need to do, and this is why Jesus is telling us to do it daily.