I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).

You might be familiar with this “old Maine” joke: a tourist stops to ask an old Mainer for directions: “How do I get to Millinocket?”  The old-timer rubs his chin, looks one way, starts to point in another, then stops. Sighs, and says, “You can’t get there from here.”

How do we find our way in these times?  What’s the way from fear to rest, from hoarding to generosity, from the kingdoms of earth and their ways to the Kingdom of Heaven and its way?

Jesus is the way.  The way into all the truth and life of God.

The Jesus way, the way we are to walk, is the way of the cross.  There is a dying involved. Not self-hatred or self-harm; a daily dying to me as the source and center of everything.  A daily putting to death of my deep desire to look good, feel good, be right, be in control and pursue my private agendas.

On the cross, Jesus fully identified himself with us.  He became one of us, one with us, and the one who is ever for us.  Here, now, Paul identifies himself with Jesus: I have been crucified with Christ.  What happened to Jesus happened for me, and to me—in order that what happened to Jesus “on the third day” might also happen to me.  Following the cross, resurrection!

Christ lives in me.  The one who went through death and came out alive on the other side of death now has taken up residence in me, in all who are named with his name.  The way of the cross, paradoxically, is the way of life. I have been crucified with Christ—and yet I live.  But it isn’t me anymore, it is Christ who lives in me.  So the life I now live—I now get to live in, through, for and to Jesus my King!

The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me.  The way of the cross is the way of love.  Real love requires a kind of dying in order that we may more truly, fully live.  To love another is to make yourself available and attentive to the needs of another, to spend your resources and even your very self for their highest good.  To give yourself away in love.

Here is the secret of the cosmos, the deepest truth: Jesus is “the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20; Revelation 13:8).  The cross shows in time what is ever true in eternity: the triune God, the eternal community of love, eternally giving themselves to each other in love.

The cross is not something the Father “does to” the Son, the Son a hapless victim of an angry Father.  The cross is the Three-in-One enacting in time what has been and always will be true in eternity: Love giving itself to and for the Beloved in Love.  Love receiving and returning Love in an endless dance of joy.

The cross is the pin that pricks time and space so that what is always true can begin leaking into and filling up our lives, our world.  The cross is the way that Love lives, for us, in us, and through us.

What freedoms do the current restrictions (social distancing, work from home, avoid crowds, wash your hands frequently) open up for you?

Name—and then practice—one or two specific ways you could allow Christ to live in you more fully, more deliberately – more joyfully?