embracing the Cross

The Lord laid on my heart to dedicate to Him these 40 days of Lent this year. It's not something our church necessarily promotes or partakes in but being impressed to jump in, I did. I purchased this little book to be my guide through these 46 days before Easter. Yes, I learned that we talk of 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter but the doesn't include the Sundays, so there's actually 46. I also discovered the word 'lent' simply means, 'spring'. Ah how I love the thought of Spring. For many, these are the longest, darkest days of winter before....finally, it's Spring.

This first section of "Bread and Wine" was titled, "Invitation". The readings were invitation to repent, to embrace the Cross, to walk through suffering with Christ.

"If we do not bear the cross of the Master, we will have to bear the cross of the world, with all its earthly goods. Which cross have you taken up? Pause and consider." ~Sadhu Sundar Singh

I especially enjoyed (that's not the right word but....) the chapter by Thomas Merton - To Know the Cross.

To believe in suffering is pride: but to suffer, believing in God, is humility. For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek him in suffering, and that by his grace we can overcome evil with good. Suffering, then, becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. it does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are. Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our suffering, but our selves.

I'm looking forward to continuing this journey of the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring.

"Look around you; Winter is over; the winter rains are over, gone! Spring flowers are in blossom all over. The whole world's a choir- and singing!...Oh get up, dear friend, my fair and beautiful lover - come to me!" Song of Solomon 2:11-13