Pick up your pyre and follow Me

I taught a class on suffering and joy last night, and am still thinking about it today.

This morning's thoughts expanded on the idea of our being called to carry the cross.

The key of course, is sacrifice. We have a God who demands sacrifice. It's true that Jesus once and for all time became the ultimate sacrifice, the final lamb. But the sacrifice continues. It is once and yet still. It is always. Perpetual. And He calls us to join in.

He calls us to carry our cross the way He carried His.

The way Isaac carried the bundle of sticks intended for his funeral pyre.

We become the body of Christ, and are called to participate in His passion and death. We are called to BE sacrifice.

But something has happened over the last century or so. We've shrugged off our willingness to participate. So much of Christianity has turned completely away from this essential tenet. So many denominations and churches focus on a cross-less Christianity, a fictional feel-good version of the real thing. A comic book version. We have altar-less altar calls, cross-free sanctuaries, and ministers with no priestly duties.

We have a  God who demands sacrifice, worshiped by a people who have largely rejected it.

Lord, what would you have me do?

Fuse me to the cross

While praying yesterday God sent me lots of good stuff, though I don't remember most now. I should keep my journal handy to capture His gifts.

The strongest of images He sent was of His cross being searing hot. I regularly imagine physically uniting myself to Christ on the cross, sometimes hanging with him, my back to His chest, sometimes clinging to the cross directly. In this meditation, I pressed up against and wrapped my arms around it, and it was so hot that the flesh which touched it was fused, so that the cross and I became one.

It was an agony of pain but it was right and good and required.

He suffers.

As I prayed the other day, I feebly attempted to unite my sins and suffering to the cross and pictured wrapping my arms around Christ pinned there, trying to hold on to it.

And I realized that while this is what He asks us to do, and what He wants us to do, the very action of clinging to it and to Him causes Him pain.

No matter what, He suffers.

Crucify Me

I was thinking about crucifixion this morning while praying.

I could picture the nails in my hands, binding me to the cross. The image was comforting; if I allow myself to be crucified with Christ, I cannot commit the sins I long to commit. Even if I pull and strain, I am connected to the cross, connected to Christ, and in so binding myself, am protected.