Work in Grief

Matthew xvi. 24 v.

“If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me.”

To take up one’s cross and “follow” is a very arduous thing. It is easy to take up one’s cross and stand; easier still to fold it in the arms and lie down; but to carry it about — that is the hard thing. All pain shuns locomotion. It is adverse to collision, adverse to contact, adverse to movement. It craves to nurse its own bitterness; it longs to be alone. Its burden is never so heavy as when the bell rings for daily toil. The waters of XTarah seek repose. If I could only rest under my cloud I might endure; but the command is too much for me — “Go, work to-day in my vineyard.” If I could go without my cros, it would be something; but I cannot. I can no more escape from it than I can escape my own shadow. It clings to me with that attraction which repulsion sometimes gives. It says, “Where thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge.” With such a companion I would rather lodge than go; it is hard at once to follow and to bear.

Son of Man, that hardness was Thine. Thine ever was a carried cross.. Thou never hadst where to lay Thy head in rest. The multitude thronged Thee with their trifling sorrows when a mighty grief was at Thine own door. They complained that the wine had run down in Cana when Thou wert thirsting for a draught of love. They murmured, at the scant bread of the wilderness when Thou wert hungering for a human heart. They wept the withering of a slender gourd when Thou wert weeping over the millions of Ninevah. And yet, Thou hadst pity on the gourd. While deep was calling unto deep within Thee, Thou didst not forget the shallow stream. The voice of Thy ocean drowned not the murmur of my brook. My puny cry was overheard by Thy soul in its sorrows, and Thou earnest into my world, carrying Thy cross. Let me follow Thee. Let me carry my cross into my brother’s world. Though it seem a poor grief compared to mine — only a child’s cry for the bread that perisheth — give me Thy divine power of locomotion. Help me to emptyr myself into that which to me is a trifle. Help me to go down from the wilderness inio Cana — from my own depths into my brother’s shallows. When I have seen them with the microscope of love they shall cease to be shallows; I shall behold them with his weak eyes, I shall magnify them with his weak heart, and, in the power of Thy mighty sympathy, I shall lift my own cross, and come.