I Need the Cross

This sounds horribly heretical, but until recently, I didn't really understand the Cross.  I didn't understand how much I need it daily, to live, to breathe, how I crave the new mercies and abundant grace it brings me each day.

This season is a season of waiting...my list of verses about waiting, kept on my phone, grows longer and longer.  God is definitely bringing me to the brink of something new, big, beautiful, and scary-wonderful.  Some days I think I can see what is over the next hill, but others everything is murky, fuzzy, confusing.  On those days, I feel so stuck and frustrated I could scream.

I'm grumpy.  Moody.  Exhausted by waiting, praying, discerning.  Easily frustrated at others, quick to overreact, definitely not reflecting the God I love and want to serve with everything I have.  Totally a sinner despite my great desires, prayers, and efforts to be more like Christ.

But then I remember the Cross...a flood of new mercies everyday.  Grace and love abundant and wider than my arms could ever reach, deeper than my human brain and heart could ever understand. 

The Cross is enough. 

To the Cross I can cling, to find new energy to pray when I'm tired of praying, to wait when I don't want to wait any more, to pour out everything I feel and think and that causes me pain.  To be given new grace for my emotional blow-outs, to be gifted with the ability to give more grace to others.

Come to the Cross.  Jesus' sacrifice there covers all things, can make anyone new, can give each of us a fresh, clean, beautiful start for each day. God can take all of our junk, yuckiness, hurt, and sin.  The Cross can take all your burdens and make you new...I need it, you need it; embrace the Cross.