Looking to Easter...
Let me share a quote I recently read from John Piper, as he comments on a well known passage (Mark 8:34) that appropriately points us in the right direction as we look toward Easter.
"To take up a cross and follow Jesus means to join Jesus on the Calvary road with a resolve to suffer and die with him. The cross is not a burden to bear; it is an instrument of pain and execution. It would be like saying, "Pick up your electric chair and follow me to the execution room." Or "Pick up this sword and carry it to the place of beheading." Or "Take up this rope and carry it to the gallows."
The domestication of cross-bearing into coughs and cranky spouses takes the radical thrust our of Christ's call."
Here is the blessing to follow, as he goes on to say,
"Jesus gives us the assurance that if we will follow him to Golgotha during all the Good Fridays of this life, we will also rise with him on the last Easter day of the resurrection. "Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it."
Looking forward to that last Easter day!
"To take up a cross and follow Jesus means to join Jesus on the Calvary road with a resolve to suffer and die with him. The cross is not a burden to bear; it is an instrument of pain and execution. It would be like saying, "Pick up your electric chair and follow me to the execution room." Or "Pick up this sword and carry it to the place of beheading." Or "Take up this rope and carry it to the gallows."
The domestication of cross-bearing into coughs and cranky spouses takes the radical thrust our of Christ's call."
Here is the blessing to follow, as he goes on to say,
"Jesus gives us the assurance that if we will follow him to Golgotha during all the Good Fridays of this life, we will also rise with him on the last Easter day of the resurrection. "Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it."
Looking forward to that last Easter day!
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