Following Jesus by Henri J. M. Nouwen

Author:Henri J. M. Nouwen [Nouwen, Henri J. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2019-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

Our Cross

If we follow the news in the morning we might wonder how anyone can eat their breakfast and go to work. There is so much pain in all the reports. I think to myself, “If I take this really seriously how can I ever do anything?” I hear about war, famine, terrorism, and environmental disasters, and I think, “If I focus too much on this, how can I live?” Sometimes the only way to survive is to become numb and say, “I can’t pay attention to all that. It is too much. It is beyond my control. I’ve got my own problems.”

Or there is anger. If, for example, on Sunday morning the minister talks about all the problems of the world and all week long we have been hearing about them, and then on Sunday morning they are there again, we feel powerless. “What do you want us to do about it?” We get upset, nervous, and angry, and it doesn’t help anyone and often leads to inaction on our part. We might even want to shout, “Why can’t you say some nice things instead?”

Confrontation with human suffering does not lead to compassion. It leads to anger, numbness, irritation, and rejection, because we don’t know how to deal with it all. It is too much. It is a heavy burden—more than we can carry.

Then there are the small sufferings that become a heavy burden. These sufferings can sometimes be worse and have more power over us.

These are the small things that can just get to us and bother us the whole day. They can occupy us—an irritating boss, traffic, an unfriendly gesture, a word of rejection, mistakes at work. These are small things, but they can take our joy away. The little things become heavy burdens because they occupy us and take a place in our heart.

Then we feel overburdened. We often say, “If I just had that thing gone I’d be fine.” But there is always just one thing. Everybody has some thorn in the flesh. Everyone has something that makes them suffer in some way. Though it may not be apparent at first, every human heart carries a deep pain. Sometimes the small crosses seem even harder to bear than the large crosses. The church is supposed to be so full of love, but sometimes in a church there are people who hate each other. In your circle and community there is jealousy and anger and it seems to be unbearable. Just where you expect love there is conflict and pain.

And that is when we feel disconnected from God. A burden becomes a heavy burden when it doesn’t feel connected to anything else. It is a burden that we have to carry by ourselves and is not shared. It is not part of anything larger. It just sits there and presses us down, down, down.

Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me” (Luke 9:23). He says, “Take up my burden. It is the burden of the whole world and it will be a light burden.

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