[UntoHim]

Thank you so much byHismercy for your heartfelt and helpful post! After all, the cross must be a very real, and very practical thing for us. Otherwise why would it have been such a central part of our Lord's ministry to his disciples, and why else would the apostle Paul have admonished us to only glory, to only boast "in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ"? (Gal 6:14) Surely "the word of the cross is the power of God" to those of us who are being saved (1 Cor 1:19), and it can be the only power that we hope and pray can bring our loved ones to the very same salvation.

The cross, like so many of the wonderful and glorious items of the Christian faith, is not only a fact of history that belongs to the past (it is most surely that), it belongs to all who would believe in the Lord from the time that He bore the cross, all the way up to this present day. And I think that byHisMercy's post reflects that, even with our faintest of cooperation, God can use us to speak the word of the cross into the lives of those around us.

Can we experience the cross? No, I don't think we can experience the cross. The cross was something that only one man could experience, because he was the only man called by God to experience the cross. Nobody before him could have experienced the cross, and nobody since Calvary could experience the cross. That was his to bear, and to bear alone, and I think we all would do well to keep this in mind.

All this being said, may the Lord grant us all his grace and mercy that we would be faithful and responsive to pick up any cross that he sets before us.
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