The daily cross
The hard saying on the road
At the height of his popularity, with crowds pressing in to see miracles, Jesus said the most unpopular thing imaginable. If anyone wants to come after me, he told them, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. To his hearers a cross was not a metaphor for a headache or a hard week; it was the instrument on which Rome executed its enemies. A man carrying a cross was a man walking to his death.
Then he added one word that turns a single heroic moment into a way of life: daily. Not a once-for-all dramatic sacrifice, but a death to self-will renewed every morning — before the coffee, before the inbox, before the day makes its demands.
The call is not to admire Jesus, or even merely to believe him, but to follow him; and the road he walks leads through a cross.
“If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
— Jesus, to the crowds — Luke 9:23 (WEB)
Take up today's cross today — the small, daily death of your own way — and leave tomorrow's to tomorrow.
“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts.”
We brace for one heroic, total surrender and so never make the small daily ones. The interior work is to relocate the cross from the dramatic to the ordinary — the surrendered preference, the unclaimed right, the set-aside self — and to take it up freshly each morning rather than waiting for a grand occasion that never comes.
Each morning this week, before the day's demands begin, name one specific self-preference you will lay down that day, and lay it down in a sentence of prayer before you rise.
We would rather admire the cross than carry it, so the imagination keeps it dramatic and far off — a someday act of heroism — while today's small death of our own way goes quietly unmade. That little word daily is the mercy: it brings the cross down to the size of this afternoon, where it is finally light enough to lift.
We are good at admiring Jesus and slow to follow him, because admiration costs nothing and following costs a cross. But the cross he asks us to carry is not, mostly, a dramatic martyrdom; it is the small, daily, unglamorous death of our own way — the preference surrendered, the right not insisted on, the self set aside for love.
The word daily is the mercy hidden in the hard saying. It means you do not have to lay down your whole life in one impossible heroic act. You only have to take up today's cross, today. Tomorrow will have its own.
- What is today's cross — the small death of self-will right in front of me?
- Do I admire Jesus more than I actually follow him?
- Where am I waiting for a heroic surrender to avoid the daily one?
Lord, I take up today's cross today. Teach me to deny myself in the small things, and to follow you. Amen.