Why The Cross Is The Difference

 Dull pain pulses as muscles tense. The day before, I had tripped over a carpet in my own house and landed in a heap. The whole left side of my body ached from the fall. It occurs to me that isn't this how we all stumble? Sometimes it isn't the big things that trip us up...it's the little ones. And often, they happen in the places where we think they'll occur the least. We presume safety and let our guard down...never thinking it'll be us. But then it is. 

 My soul had felt fallen for several days. Words wouldn't come across right, misunderstandings abounded, and my thoughts felt like a jumble of so many tangled things. But somehow...grace and joy still threaded through it all...

 Faith. I fix my eyes on that one little word. That one word that has guided me to so much peace where I had long-searched to find it. I write it down and trace it's letters as if to write it deep on my heart. As if to remind myself in this pain that there is still love to be found. As if to remember in all this brokenness that there is still God. 

 Faith. Five little tracings that have become the door to a life I'd always wanted but didn't know I needed. And then it hits me: the "t." The difference is in the "t." Because the "t" is in the shape of the cross. Oh does my heart rejoice as the one letter seems to leap right up from out of the word. Faith is always centered in the cross. Belief revolves around Christ and all things sacrifice and all things love. Selfless love. Grace. 

 And then I notice that, in contrast, faith's counterpart, unbelief, has no "t." Lose the cross and you lose everything. Choose fear and you get nothing but worry, anxiety, lack of peace, hopelessness. Lose God, and you've lost all that matters.

 Faith is a choice to focus on the cross and the Jesus who once hung on it. Faith involves God. Take God out, and you have nothing left. Leave Him in, let the cross define everything, let the "t" speak, and your entire life finds soul-meaning there.

 I return to this thought throughout my day. In tiny letters, I write it on my wrist for the day so I can think of it. Write it on the pulse, the center of life-giving bloodstream to and from the heart. Remember the cross, I say. Remember the cross.

 I press the truth into my heart-memory and I continue to preach it to my forgetful self: That God is always offering a way to see differently. That, because of the cross, there is another way to embrace the brokenness. Another way to press through the pain. Because His pain makes a way. Those cross-beams of death give us abundant life. And when I choose the better way, I choose that abundant life.

 On the other hand, when I choose dis-belief, when I choose the human way instead of the Divine-way, I choose a death of sorts. I choose to lose the "t". And I lose me in the process. I fail, I flounder, I feel the soul-ache and resist the cure. 

 Faith. Oh God, let me see the cross stand right out! I write the "t" even larger, and I see it now. Bold, beautiful, yet simple. Two crossed lines that change everything. And isn't this God's way...bold, brave, yet ordinary? Glorious yet simple at the same time? 

 Gain the cross, and you gain forever. You gain Christ. You gain faith to move mountains of fear that stand in your way. You gain hope for your one soul.

 Somehow the pain feels a little less now after this revelation. So write those five letters large on your heart. And speak them often. Embrace the "t" and your one little heart just might bust open in praise...broken, yet beautiful praise.