So I started watching ‘Son of God’ and in between I found myself troubled thinking of the pain that Jesus Christ went through, the cost of the cross. As always when I think of His crucifixion, I felt this heaviness and sorrow in my heart mixed with guilt that He died for me. And it hit me again, everyone has crosses in their life to bear – the size/breadth/depth whatever is different but still the cross and the pain incurred to the child of God may be common in terms of the agony they go through.

The crosses in life are certainly not ‘One Size Fits All’. To each person, it is different, God knows the measure of pain we can take and perhaps this is how He allows the pain in our life. Truly, He never gives us more than we can bear, oh sometimes He takes us to the limit, the absolute limit of our pain threshold, but never beyond it.

Come to think about it, perhaps this is the only way we can ever come close to fathom what Christ went through for us. If we think of the Cross when we battle our own crosses, I believe, we understand a little bit better each time.

• Every time I feel rejected by someone – remind myself to think of my God who heard the very people He came on this earth to save, chant ‘Crucify Him! I can imagine the sorrow in my heart when rejected by anyone is nothing compared to that. Luke 23:21.. but they kept on calling out, saying, “Crucify, crucify Him!”
• Every time I am in pain, emotional or physical – remind myself to think of my Jesus who had nails piercing His hands and feet, how He was tortured and physically tormented. What pain He went through.  I can think of my Father in heaven, what He would have felt seeing His son pay the ultimate price on the cross. What a heartbreaking pain that would have been for our Abba Father!
• Every time I am unable to forgive someone who wronged me – remind myself to think of my Jesus who in His last breaths, prayed forgiveness over the very people who crucified Him. Luke 23:34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” 
• Every time I am judgmental and deem someone bad without giving them a chance to come back – remind myself to think of Jesus who welcomed a criminal on the cross to heaven, when the criminal recognized who Christ was and declared his faith at that very last moments of his life. Luke 23:43 “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” 
• Every time I am so absorbed in my own suffering that I do not see the plight of others – remind myself to think of how Jesus looked at His disciple and His mother and comforted her to direct her motherly love to Jesus’s disciple also standing there, even as am sure He was telling the disciple to care for His mother. John 19:26-27 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”
• Every time I feel like God is silent and I cry out to Him, feeling at that moment that no one else knows what that feels like – remind myself to think of Christ who cried out Father God on the cross, possibly feeling the very same hurt if not more. Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
• Every time I feel like giving up, like asking God to take away my suffering before His purpose because I feel like I can’t take it anymore – remind me that just as Jesus who took it all and finally was able to say ‘It is finished’, I too must finish the race and bear the cross. John 19:30 … he said, “It is finished!”
• Every time I feel weak and uncertain of my future – remind me that just as my Jesus who in His very last breath committed His spirit to God in complete surrender, I too must trust God and just commit myself and my all to Him, till my last breath. Luke 23:46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.

The Cross, oh the Cross, where our Savior gave it all, gave it all for me and you!

Once again, humbled.