Compromising Crosses

Strange, is it not, that we dare without shame to alter, to modulate the words of Christ while speaking for Christ to the very ones for whom He died?

Christ calls men to carry a cross; we call them to have fun in His Name. He calls them to forsake the world; we assure them that if they but accept Jesus the world is their oyster. He calls them to suffer; we call them to enjoy all the bourgeois comforts modern civilization affords. He calls them to self-abnegation and death. We call them to spread themselves like green bay trees or perchance even to become stars in a pitiful fifth-rate religious zodiac. He calls them to holiness; we call them to a cheap and tawdry happiness that would have been rejected with scorn by the least of the Stoic philosophers.

Verse
Anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Matthew 10:38–39

Thought
We've fashioned crosses of gold to wear around our neck or on our lapel. We place crosses on church steeples. Have we forgotten that for Christ the cross was an instrument of death? And our cross for us is a means of death to self.

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for trying to take cross-bearing out of my daily life. It is not innocent fun I need, it is holiness.