On the way to Golgotha Simon the Cyrene didn’t volunteer to carry the
cross for Jesus, he was forced to carry it. There are times when I’ve been coerced
into carrying a cross that doesn’t seem like it’s mine and I feel anger, resentment…and
then guilt for being selfish and unloving. We have no way of knowing what Simon
felt on the way to Golgotha, but I can imagine that after the Lord’s
resurrection he saw carrying the cross of Jesus in a whole new light.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----We are without excuse. There is a reason. But reason is not an excuse. The day we died we died indeed. Everything has a cause and itself becomes a cause of something else. So everything links like a chain. And the chain is not one that links a beginning with an end, but is like a chain threaded within chain mail linking up a fabric stretching beyond our comprehension, a fabric of countless beginnings bound to countless ends bound to countless beginnings. One twisted link in its earliest beginning destroyed the godliness of the pattern woven by causes and effects. All stitches except those of Christ fell awry since. Simon’s ability to comprehend was woven of such fabric. Ours is of similar fabric. The Word of God is not.
-----And God’s Word was available to Simon. Maybe it was not in his home upon his coffee table (we have less excuse), but it was in the nearest synagogue being at least that available to the insistence of persistent curiosity for godliness. Although it took Paul’s inspired hand to tie meanings of the Old Testament into the New, those meanings were still there in the Old Testament’s loose ends for tying by anyone careful enough to connect each link of his own fabric into a godly mesh of understanding. There in the beginning of Genesis the bruised heal and the crushed head whispered the resurrection, if not clearly, then at least substantively. Throughout the Old Testament the affairs of Christ’s life and the glorious end for God’s faithful were sketched, hinted, and whispered. To have missed their inspiration was the effect of weaving fabric poorly, not of an excuse.
-----Likewise they are shouted in the New Testament, bold material for strong imagination’s turn into personal perception for strength of faith and inspiration to do the good works God beforehand prepared for us to walk in. Good works that interlink chain mail not fashionably, but functionally. Good works that cause effects which become causes. And if the fabric since that passionate week in which Simon struggled is not seen as gleaming brighter, then like an eye exam, then goes up a call for the eye Surgeon. Seeing is believing when reading is of the Word.
-----The New Jerusalem stands fifteen hundred miles high and looms fifteen hundred miles wide upon the horizon, big enough for even the small imagination not to miss. The innumerable links of blackest despair between now and there merely form a background against which the intermittent links of faithfulness and goodness glisten as bright as those of the past, as golden as the sacrifice, as diamond as the resurrection. They are not enough for an unbroken weave. Yet they are enough to mark a discernable trail for the understanding which recognizes in each the cause of Christ. Forgiveness for the blackest links, witness of the brightest links, the sashes of our trails woven to that Holy City cry out the glory of His Father, our Father. The sparkle of the godly links seen behind us assure the promise of what’s unseen before us by His Spirit going through them all as the cause of their next effect. We are without excuse. We are with the reason of His Spirit, the forgiveness of His grace, and the life of His Son. The joy of it is our strength to carry on.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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