Choose Life and Take Up Your Cross

Where We Are

On this Thursday after Ash Wednesday, we take our first full steps into Lent. The readings intensify the call to conversion that began yesterday with ashes. Moses sets before us the starkest choice in all of Scripture, and Jesus describes what it costs to follow him. We are reading Luke's Gospel now, as the Lenten weekday readings draw from various Gospels to weave a sustained meditation on discipleship and repentance.

The Word

Moses addresses the Israelites with breathtaking directness: "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him." The psalm contrasts the blessed person who delights in God's law with the wicked who are like chaff blown by the wind. In the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples plainly that the Son of Man must suffer greatly, be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and on the third day be raised. Then he turns to all: "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."

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Reflect

Moses' words and Jesus' words create a powerful dialogue across the centuries. Moses says: choose life. Jesus says: the way to life passes through the cross. These are not contradictory; they are complementary. The life God offers is not the easy, comfortable existence we naturally prefer. It is a life that has passed through death and come out the other side, transformed.

The word "daily" in Jesus' instruction is crucial. This is not a single heroic act but a daily discipline. Every morning brings the same choice: will I live for myself or for Christ? Will I grasp at control or release it? Will I seek comfort or embrace the cross-shaped love that gives without counting the cost?

In Lent, we practice this daily dying in small ways: through fasting, we die to the tyranny of appetite; through almsgiving, we die to the illusion that our resources belong only to us; through prayer, we die to the pretense that we can manage life on our own. These are rehearsals for the deeper surrenders God will ask of us.

Jesus does not hide the cost. He announces his own suffering, rejection, and death before calling others to follow. This is honest leadership. He will not ask us to go where he has not gone first. The cross is not a burden imposed from outside; it is the shape love takes in a broken world.

Moses ends with a promise: "Choose life, that you and your descendants may live." The cross is not the final word. Resurrection follows. Choose the way of the cross, and you choose life, real, abundant, eternal life.

Living It

Today, practice the daily cross Jesus describes. First, identify one specific area where you are clinging to your own comfort or control. Make a conscious choice to release it, even for today. This could be giving up your preferred schedule to help someone, surrendering a worry you have been gripping tightly, or forgiving a slight you would normally hold onto. Second, reframe your Lenten sacrifices through the lens of Moses' words: these are not punishments but choices for life. Fasting is choosing freedom from appetite. Giving is choosing generosity over hoarding. Prayer is choosing relationship with God over self-sufficiency. Third, at the end of today, examine where you chose self and where you chose the cross. Without judgment, simply notice and bring it to God.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, you told us plainly what following you would cost, and you did not ask us to bear anything you had not already carried yourself. Give us the courage to take up our cross daily, trusting that the path through death leads to life. Help us choose life in every decision today, even when the choice is difficult. May this season of Lent strip away everything that keeps us from you, until only your love remains. Amen.