What Is The Daily Cross?

What is our daily cross? It is that one or more things which are unavoidable in our lives, and which produce suffering of body or mind or heart.

It is that thing which in our poor judgment seems to hinder the easy flow of our religious life.

Sometimes our cross may be composed of a combination of things, but as a general rule, it is some one instrument or cause of suffering to the soul.

Were there no suffering of some kind involved, then there could be no cross at all, for the only thing in a cross is its pain.

The outward form of the daily cross may change with years, or the same cross may continue till death; but in some form it abides.

It is as impossible for the true saint not to have some cross as it is to walk in the sunshine without having shadow.

The Holy Ghost gives us to understand plainly that the multitudes of jolly, ease-loving, and easy-going religionists, who bear no daily suffering with Jesus, are only sectarian-born religious bastards, and not really kingdom-born souls (Heb 12:8).

It is your daily cross that makes you weep more than any other thing; that sends you to frequent prayer; that leads you to ransack the promises; that makes you cry out, like Jesus, "Father, why is this?" that causes you to reach out to the everlasting arms which sustain you (Deu 33:27); that makes you sick of the world and selfishness; that gives you longings for heaven.

Oh, precious old homely, daily cross, what deep and far- reaching effects thou hast wrought through all these prayer-paved years!

~G. D. Watson~