Are you in a hurry? I know that over the past several years, I have been caught up in hurry, what biofeedback and meditation folks might call hurry sickness. It comes from the society we live in, one that demands we “measure up” and be “successful”. As a university professor, it is so very easy to get caught up in this world. You know the one. It demands a better answer each day, more progress and achievement each day, more, and more, and more. This is our society, one that never slows down and looks down upon us if we do.
When it is time to retire don’t we say that person is being “put out to pasture?” How in the world is that a compliment? Or the recognition of all that a person might have done? Our society looks at the older, “seasoned” citizens as a problem to be dealt with and tolerated. That is most certainly not the way of Christ and should not be our mindset in any part of life.
It is hard to escape this problem. It is hard to see ourselves as good enough just the way we are and accept it. This is what I believe Christ meant when he said, ” to follow me you must take up your cross daily and follow”. For so many years I thought of this as such a sacrifice and that it is a commandment. It is neither. It is how we should be as Followers of Christ. We get to make the decision daily whether we want to keep on doing things our way or to let that go and do things God’s way.
Gee, that sounds so simple. Trust me after more than 50 years as a follower, it is anything but easy. When I first started on this path with Christ, it was all about the rules, the have-tos, the musts. Why do we do that to ourselves and to our fellow Christ followers? Christ never did that, he never said “come to me when you get your act together” and then we will talk. Why do we not teach people in the Christian community that it is a daily choice? Perhaps it is even a moment-by-moment choice, to do things God’s way or to strike out on our own.
This is what it means to “take up your cross daily”. Each day, it is a choice and if you are like me, it is a hard choice. No, not because it is so hard to follow Christ. It is hard because the world we live in calls so strongly to do it the world’s way, to do things our own way. Perhaps we should stop trying so hard to “be like Christ” and just learn to be ourselves! We are, after all, created in His image.
TMM