Evening
Time: 6:55 PM PST
"Take up the cross, and follow Me." --Mark 10:21
You have not the making of your own cross, although unbelief is a master
carpenter at cross-making; neither are you permitted to choose your own cross,
although self-will would fain be lord and master; but your cross is prepared and
appointed for you by divine love, and you are cheerfully to accept it; you are
to take up the cross as your chosen badge and burden, and not to stand cavilling
at it. This night Jesus bids you submit your shoulder to His easy yoke. Do not
kick at it in petulance, or trample on it in vain-glory, or fall under it in
despair, or run away from it in fear, but take it up like a true follower of
Jesus. Jesus was a cross-bearer; He leads the way in the path of sorrow. Surely
you could not desire a better guide! And if He carried a cross, what nobler
burden would you desire? The Via Crucis is the way of safety; fear not to
tread its thorny paths.
Beloved, the cross is not made of feathers, or lined with velvet, it is heavy
and galling to disobedient shoulders; but it is not an iron cross, though your
fears have painted it with iron colours, it is a wooden cross, and a man can
carry it, for the Man of sorrows tried the load. Take up your cross, and by the
power of the Spirit of God you will soon be so in love with it, that like Moses,
you would not exchange the reproach of Christ for all the treasures of Egypt.
Remember that Jesus carried it, and it will smell sweetly; remember that it will
soon be followed by the crown, and the thought of the coming weight of glory
will greatly lighten the present heaviness of trouble. The Lord help you to bow
your spirit in submission to the divine will ere you fall asleep this night,
that waking with to-morrow's sun, you may go forth to the day's cross with the
holy and submissive spirit which becomes a follower of the Crucified.