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Music For the Soul
Devotional: June 4th

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"HE ENDURED THE CROSS"

Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His glory? - Luke 24:26

" Endured the Cross " does not merely mean "experienced the pain," but it means stood steadfast under, endured in the fullest and noblest sense of the word. Many a man endures suffering in the lower sense who does not endure it in the higher; but Christ did in both. And, of course, that endurance of the Cross was not confined to the moments of His life when the actual physical pain of the Crucifixion was upon Him, not confined to that last day, but stretched through His whole career. Therefore we may apply this "endurance," not only to the moment of actual physical sufferings, but to the whole of our Lord’s earthly career, the patient, heroic steadfastness with which He bore them.

That is an aspect of our Lord’s character that is not often enough presented to our minds. " The velvet glove has hidden the iron hand," in popular apprehension. Temptations which shatter feebler resolutions, as the waves some feeble dyke, broke like the vain spray against that breakwater; His fixed will - that will like adamant, that could not be moved, that could not be broken, that never faltered - led Him to tread, from the beginning to the end of His career, a path every step of which was strewed with hot plowshares and sharp swords. He trod it with bleeding and with seared feet, but without a quiver and without a falter; and, as the hour drew near, we read that " He steadfastly set His face" - made it hard as a flint - to go to Jerusalem, impelled by that threefold, mighty force of obedience to the Father, love to man, and vision of the glory, so that His disciples were struck with wonder and awe at the fixed determination stamped on the settled countenance, and manifested in the eager steps which outran them on the rocky road to the Cross. That heroic endurance must be ours too, if we are not to rot in selfish and inglorious ease. Life at first may seem gay and brilliant, a place for recreation or profit or pleasure, but we very soon find out that it is a sand-strewn wrestling ground. Many flowers cannot grow where are the feet of the runner and the strife of the combatants. The first thing done to make an arena for wrestlers is to take away the turf and the daisies, then to beat the soil down hard and flat. And so our lives get flattened, stripped of their beauty and their fragrance, because they are not meant to be gardens, they are meant to be wrestling-grounds. There comes to every life that is worth living hours of sacrifice when duty can only be done at the cost of a bleeding heart. Every man that is not the devil’s servant has to carry a cross, and to be fastened to it, if he will do his Master’s work. Besides which crucifixion in service, there are all the other common sorrows storming in upon us, so that sometimes it is as much as a man can do not to be swept away by the current, but to keep his footing in mid-channel

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