Boxes and crosses

            I woke up. Uggggggghhh.  My head. My throat.  All of me.  I considered rolling over and sleeping some more, but there was work to be done.  Always work.  And so I marched dutifully into my day.

I took some cold medicine.  Maybe then I’d feel better.

I got some work done.  At least I felt productive.

I did some unexpected, hard work.  Hey, I didn’t complain.  Go me.  Renee has an agenda, and she’s going to get it done.  I kept on going.

            Moving onto my next task, I dropped a bag of stuff off with a friend.  But she didn’t let me move straight on to the following chore.  She stopped me and we talked.  And thank goodness.  It’s like she knew.  She saw me marching out to battle, but noticed I was battling the wrong things and had grabbed the wrong weapons.  My enemies: time and tasks.  My weapons:                .  That’s right.  Nothing.  I had no weapons.

            “Renee,” she said to me.  “If we watch the children, but we don’t have Christ, our work is nothing.  More than anything, more than everything, we need to receive the love of Christ and give the love of Christ.  Daily.  Without it, our work is nothing.”

            In my mind I perused my day.  Christ?  Nope, hadn’t been there.  I forgot to invite him.

I woke up sick, I took medicine.

I had work to do, Renee did it alone.

Unexpected jobs?  I bucked up and dealt with them.

I had reduced my work to a list of defined tasks that I thought I, in my puny power, could accomplish.  And from my human perspective, I did them.

            But my friend challenged me.  Was my work really a list of finite jobs and chores that I could box up and then check off?  Or am I called every day to take up an awkward, bulky cross and follow Christ?

            How many times do I see the cross Jesus asks me to carry and say, “I can take that, I’m strong enough.  But first, let me simplify.  We’ll rearrange the cross and reduce it to a box, because that’s easier to carry.”  But in chopping off the limbs of the cross and bundling them up, I’ve missed the point.  Christ not only took on the weight of my sin, he carried the shape too.  He absorbed the wrath of God and he addresses my heart.  It would have been easier, I’m sure, for him to just have been my propitiation.  But he’s more; he’s my sanctification.  He’s sent his Spirit to abide in and work through me.

            And so the cross that Jesus asks me to carry is a cross that requires loving the children, not merely watching them.  Such a cross includes cheerfulness, not simply dutiful doing.  Such a cross calls for submitting my circumstances to God, not taking some cold medicine.  Such a cross insists upon Christ’s presence every moment of the day.

            Humanly speaking, yesterday I seemed to be winning my battle.  I was slashing and slaying tasks left and right, charging ahead dauntlessly though wounded and ragged.  But I doubt that’s the way God saw my day.  I’m sure a looked like a child with a feather for a sword and a piece of paper as a shield, charging into a dandelion field “slaying” my foes and watching the white tops fall to the ground in satisfaction.
            And to this naïve warrior, my friend came, calling sweetly, “Renee, look to Christ.  He blesses your work, he gives it meaning.  He bestows wisdom and power for the complicated range of emotions for which he asks you to care.  He gives rest to the weary and the sick.  Come, abide in him.”

            I walked away from that encounter humbled.  My checked off to do list was now rubbish, because it was no longer the enemy.  My new enemy, my attitude, was a little more shadowy, and a lot less defined.

But my new weapons, they are so much better.  In one hand, I grasp the Word of God, and in the other, I hold his hand.