Never Been Easy

Losing your self has never been easy.

The age hasn’t yet come, nor will it ever, when self-denial will be convenient, or taking up a cross comfortable.

In our culture of expressive individualism and the modern sacred self, Jesus’s call in this week’s Gospel stabs at the very heart at best…or at worst just sounds culturally incoherent and stupid. Who will we be, after all, if we hand our selves over to a Lord who demands all of us? Nice. Neat. Bland. A soul dressed in beige every day, for ever.*

But the triune God who made heaven and earth, the sea and everything in it—and created us in their own image—is absolutely not a God of beige, as any field of wildflowers will attest. He is the God of the orchestra and the dance who made a world shimmering with diversity yet held together in him. A God who can make anyone part of a grand whole, but never swallowed up; a member of a worldwide body, but with a distinct role; one among billions, but with your own beautiful part to sing in a colossal chorus.

Die to your self and you will find the true you, Jesus says.

See you Sunday.

Steve+

*“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”—Friedrich Nietzsche