Nothing But the Cross

 
In a conversation this week some of the advice in Galatians 6 was being looked at.  Yet while we were talking my eyes continually went to the enlarged and highlighted heading of the chapter “Nothing but the Cross”. 
 
It has reverberated over and over in my mind.  Echoing across the great divide of how I am called to live and how I actually live.  Echoing across the canyon that exists between my head and my heart.  Echoing in the caverns of my heart that still hide away, yet long to be out in the open.   Echoing in the deepest place of the soul that is where God never stops calling to me.  Calling, calling, calling to me.
 
I have come to the Cross-to find freedom and although I have embraced it, embraced the person who died there, Jesus Christ, I don’t have complete freedom in my life.  This place where passionate anger inflicted pain into the hands of a passionate love that infused healing.
 
Nothing but the Cross - the place to come and yet not to stay. The place to find the One for whom I will lose all, and find everything.  There is a canyon between my head that says yes I will and my heart that says no I can’t pay that price - but I know it is the way to freedom. Nothing but the Cross can show me the road signs to freedom. 
 
“Love others as you love yourself.  That’s an act of true freedom.”
“Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit.”
“Live creatively…”
“ Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate.”
 
LIVE – find FREEDOM – with…NOTHING BUT THE CROSS
 
Nothing but the Cross holds freedom.  Nothing but the Cross can give me courage to hold my cup of life that is a cup of sorrow and a cup of joy.  No other road but this one that passes the Cross can let me live with passion.  And passion means the searing sorrows as well the heart bursting joy for the whole journey.
 
I also heard a song this week that while it doesn’t talk about the Cross, for me it has spoken about the man who knew that all his work was a walk to the Cross.
 
“You raise me up so I can stand on mountains.
  You lift me up to walk on stormy seas.
  I am strong when I am on your shoulders.
  You lift me up – to more than I can be”
 
(It is from the musical “Secret Garden” - a lot about removing walls of the heart and finding the magnificent plethora of life that lies within.)  
 
The internal canyons are not uncross able. There are still questions, still unknowns, still canyons and caverns of the soul that echo with them.  The bridge is built; the unknowns will be answered by “Nothing but the Cross”