Lead Me To The Cross..

LeadMeToTheCross

This powerful lyric from Hillsong looked down on me one day when I was subbing in the choir room:

Lead me to the cross where your love poured out, bring me to my knees, Lord I lay me down.

Rid me of myself, I belong to you.  Lead me, lead me to the cross.

I heard a preacher say that she lived in response to the cross.

A priest friend wrote that there were limits in which he had not been tested,

“Jesus had no limits,” he said, “He had been tested in them all while hanging on the cross.”

My stomach fluttered as I turned within to imagine being tested in every single limit the world could hurl at me,

every single hurt, disappointment, consequence, loss, grief, agony, fear, doubt…

My meditations don’t even come close.

With this sacrifice, freely given at a great cost, in order to save me a place in heaven, how can I not live in response to the cross?

All the time?

And yet I don’t.

But God doesn’t love me any less for that.

However, when I re-read a familiar Gospel story about the wise and foolish virgins, their oil and lack thereof, I hear, as if for the first time, the finality of the bridegroom’s words to those stranded on the wrong side of the door,

“I tell you the truth, I do not know you.” (Matthew 25:1-13)

LeadMeToTheCross2

Ouch, that hurts!

How could I risk God saying to me in the end,

“Who are you?  Vivienne?  Truly, I don’t know you.”?

God may love me but this reading makes things quite clear.

“Stay alert because you do not know the day or the hour.” (Matthew 25:13)

C.S.Lewis writes,

“There are only two kinds of people in the end:  those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.'” (The Great Divorce)

God’s heart will be broken if I’m not ready…mine will be filled with regret.  There will be no second chances, no going back, as the rich man learned in Luke 16 verses 19-31.

“If they do not respond to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:31)

Lead me to the cross where your love poured out, bring me to my knees, Lord I lay me down.

Rid me of myself, I belong to you.  Lead me, lead me to the cross. 

Amen.  Now where did I put my oil?

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