| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 10 |
Page 6 |
One comfort in such an experience is that our cross has to be carried only one day at a time. It is a fine secret to be able to live by the day. When we think of a lifelong cross that we have to carry till we die, the burden seems unendurable. But we can bear any pain or suffering for a day.
“And so
God lays a little on us every day
And never, I believe, on all the way,
Will burdens bear so deep
Or pathways lie so steep,
But we can go, if by God’s power
We only bear the burden of the hour.”
Some one says, “I could bear my cross with joy if it was one that God gave to me. But my cross is not from God. Human hands put it on me. Human hands make it a daily cross of injustice, unfairness, wrong, cruel suffering.” No doubt it is a hundred times harder to bear such a cross made for us by human hatred or brutality than it is to take up a cross of pain or sorrow or loneliness which comes from our heavenly Father. There is a sacredness about something that God gives us which makes it easier for us to accept it. We know there is love in it. But, however our cross may come to us, whether directly from God, through some providence, or indirectly, through some human unkindness, the Master’s bidding is that we take it up daily and continue following him. It is our cross, whether God or man lays it on our shoulder.
The cross which Jesus bore was made by human hands. Men persecuted him, men wove the crown of thorns for his head, and men nailed his hands to the wood. Did he resist his cross because human cruelty made it for him? No; he accepted it without a murmur, without a word of resentment. He kept love in his heart through all the terrible hours. That is the way he would have us take up our cross, whatever it may be – never bitterly or resentfully, never sullenly or despairingly.
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