The timbers of a cross aren’t carved from softwood. They don’t bend to your shoulder or nestle into the folds of your routine. They dig in. They scrape the skin. They press against your frame and break the things that never belonged there to begin with.
Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). He didn’t offer it as metaphor. He walked it, step by step, under the weight of rough wood soaked in the sweat of condemned men. Splinters worked their way into already torn shoulders. Blood darkened the grain. He stumbled under it not because He lacked strength but because the cross is meant to crush what belongs to the old world. It was never intended to be manageable. It was meant to kill.
The command to carry our cross doesn’t begin with action. It begins with surrender. You cannot lift the cross while clutching the things you think will save you. It won’t fit between your arms full of fear, your tight grip on reputation, your desire to manage every outcome. The cross makes no room for that.
The life of self must be laid down before the cross can be taken up.
We try to bargain. To carry it with one hand while holding our plans with the other. We imagine we can follow Christ without dying where He died. But the path doesn’t widen for our comfort. It narrows to the shape of His footsteps, and to follow Him, we must become small.
And the cross is exposure.
It doesn’t permit shadows. The crucified body is nailed wide and bare, arms stretched open, unable to shield its core from sun, storm, or scorn. It offers no defense from spit, from jeers, from the sting of wind through open wounds. There’s no part of you you can hide on a cross. No image to preserve. No control to keep. It’s where all pretense is stripped away and only truth remains, wounded, visible, surrendered.
And it is personal. Singular.
You can’t climb the beams with your arms around your loved ones. You can’t shield your children or explain yourself to your spouse from up there. The road to the cross narrows until it fits only your feet. Not because love fails but because this is where love is made real.
You die alone, so that you might live in communion. Alone with Christ, who was first alone for us. The cross doesn’t isolate you. It frees you from the lie that you ever had to save anyone. It turns your clinging into trust. It places your family, your future, your very breath into the hands of the Father.
And this is where resurrection begins.
The cross is not a lifestyle addition. It is not a cause to rally behind or a symbol to wear. It is the end of the old man. The end of striving and self-protection. The end of proving and posturing. It is your grave. And it is your birthplace.
Saint Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). The early Church didn’t soften those words. The martyrs believed them with their blood. The desert fathers carried them in silence across burning sands. The cross has always been the door.
Some carry it quietly, a thousand little deaths of pride behind closed doors. Some carry it in the open, mocked and misunderstood for righteousness. Some carry it in hospitals, in kitchens, in monasteries, in prisons. But no one carries it with their arms full.
It’s only when we let go, of the need to be seen, the hunger to be in control, the fear of pain, that we finally have hands empty enough to lift it.
And when we do, when we say yes to that wood pressing into our frame, we find something waiting for us. Or rather, Someone.
He is there. Always ahead. Always near. The Lamb who was slain. The Shepherd who does not ask us to go where He has not gone. His voice in the dust. His strength in our weakness. His love stretched wide where we once feared to be seen.
The cross is heavy. But it is holy.
Lay it all down. Pick up the timber. And follow Him.
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