The Cross I bear is just Perfect for me!

I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm tempted to complain, "God - the cross you gave me is too heavy! Why did you ask me to carry this…I can't go on. I'm tired. Other's lives seem to come together so easy, but mine is always full of challenges and trials. Isn't there an easier way?"

There is a poem called "The Changed Cross." It represents a weary one who thought that her cross was surely heavier than those of others whom she saw about her, and she wished that she might choose another instead of her own. She slept, and in her dream she was led to a place where many crosses lay, crosses of different shapes and sizes. There was a little one most beauteous to behold, set in jewels and gold. "Ah, this I can wear with comfort," she said. So she took up, but her weak form shook beneath it. The jewels and the gold were beautiful, but they were far too heavy for her to carry.

Next she saw a lovely cross with fair flowers entwined around its sculptured form. Surely that was the one for her. She lifted it, but beneath the flowers were piercing thorns which tore her flesh.

At last, as she went on, she came to a plain cross, without jewels, without fancy carvings, with only a few words of love inscribed upon it. This she took up and it proved the best of all, the easiest to be born. And as she looked upon it, bathed in the radiance that fell from heaven, she recognized her own old cross. She had found it again, and it was the best of all and lightest for her.

God knows best what cross we need to bear! We do not know how heavy other people's crosses are. We envy someone who is rich; his is a golden cross set with jewels, but we do not know how heavy his cross is. Here is another whose life seems very lovely. She bears a cross entwined with flowers. But beneath those flowers is some deep pain. If we could try all the other crosses that we think lighter than our own, we would at last find that no one of them is suited for us as well as our very own!

"The fact that we are called upon to endure trial shows that the Lord Jesus sees in us something precious which He desires to develop. If He saw in us nothing whereby He might glorify His name, He would not spend time in refining us. He does not cast worthless stones into His furnace. It is valuable ore that He refines…" Ministry of Healing, p. 472

"Too many, in planning for a brilliant future, make an utter failure. Let God plan for you. As a little child, trust to the guidance of Him who will “keep the feet of His saints.” 1 Samuel 2:9. God never leads His children otherwise than they would choose to be led, if they could see the end from the beginning and discern the glory of the purpose which they are fulfilling as co-workers with Him." Help in Daily Living, p. 19  

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