"If any man, come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow Me into life eternally. Deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow Jesus, He is the way truth and life"
The above song was a little ditty from some tapes my siblings and I used to listen to when we were kids. It was from Paslty the singing song book. Little catchy tunes that effectively transcribed the truths from the Bible. We had almost every tape memorized. For whatever reason, this particular one got stuck in my head today and I was suddenly struck by it's significance. Of course, Jesus isn't talking about a literal cross. Rather, he is talking about the burdens we bear in this human life. Even when we surrender our lives to him and the burden of sin falls off, we're still left with the burden of our humanity. We sin, we make mistakes - but the grace of God covers all of that as along as we realize what we've done and ask for forgiveness. So what does it mean to "pick up your cross"? Simply put, I think it means that as we follow Jesus, we're lugging along our whole kit and caboodle of faults, character flaws, you name it! But in the shadow of the cross, we can be reminded that all has been forgiven. Our sins are nailed to the cross, right where they should be, and that's where they'll stay after we depart this life. For now, we have to drag them around a bit and we're painfully reminded of them from time to time. But there's hope for us - a hope that is built on nothing less, than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
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