(Based on Philippians 3:17 – 4:1)
The season of Lent is an emotionally charged journey with Jesus. It is a time of deep reflection as we consider the desert places in our lives and the practice and failure that meet us in our quest to follow Jesus to a cross…
A newspaper told the story of a group of cotton farmers who were sitting around a potbelly stove discussing religion. The discussion quickly turned to a debate which in turn became an argument. They turned to the eldest…
“Well,” said the old man, “you know there are 3 ways to get over to the cotton gin from here. You can go right over the hill. It’s shorter, but a powerful climb. You can go around the east side. That’s not too far, but the road is rougher… You can go around the west side of the hill, which is the long way but the easiest. But you know…when you get there the gin man doesn’t ask you how you came. He just asks, ‘How is your cotton?’”
A lot of people liked that story. It fits well with a pluralistic, politically correct worldview of sanitized religion. It suggests that the cross is not an essential landmark on the road to citizenship in heaven. Any road is okay if your works are good.
Take, for example, a woman who wrote to Dear Abby: I would like to meet a man…who enjoys going to church. I belong to the First Methodist Church, Blessed Angels Catholic Church, and the Mount Zion Jewish Temple. I also attend the Christian Science Church regularly, but I do take aspirin occasionally. Can you please help me find a man of good character who is interested in marriage and belongs to any of the above-mentioned places of worship? A moderate cigarette smoker is OK, but please, no beer drinkers. Signed, Victoria.
This is what happens when people believe it doesn’t matter how you get there. They think they can claim heaven without the cross and without the transforming love of the Savior who died on it; and yet pretend some kind of moral authority.
An astute theologian put it this way: Failing to keep the cross at the center of salvation and the death of Jesus at the center of the cross, Christians and the Christian point will continue to pass each other in the night.
What is the point? Dear friends in the Lord stand firmly together beneath the cross of Christ in the light of His sacred glory. John Bowring was such a friend. He had been inspired by a cross that remained standing tall over a church destroyed by a storm. He saw in that scene God’s light and love, Christ’s peace and joy that would never forsake us. His tombstone is inscribed with these words: In the Cross of Christ I Glory. May these words be inscribed upon our hearts, our lives examples of how to stand together as dear friends of the cross.