Carrying Our Cross

Picking up our crosses and joining Jesus this Lenten Season has been so incredibly wonderful so far. Each Friday during Lent, my son Gabriel and I make a very new and different commitment, as we feel Jesus asking us to walk to our nearby mountain pueblos while meditating and praying the Stations of the Cross. And of course, it has been a true opportunity to exercise our faith and confidence in the Lord.

Our prayer walks have been as long as eight hours with steep inclines up mountains and as short as six hours crossing rivers and dodging snakes each Friday. It seems up front that it is a miraculous achievement that we even make it up the mountain and back again, as we are walking half of the journey in the dark. But what is more miraculous is that our community has joined us each Friday.

As a community, we take turns carrying the heavy wooden cross, reading and leading songs, and taking turns lighting the pathways in the darkness. Many of us have fallen more times than we can count, we have been rained on, and we each carry our own personal crosses, health issues, worldly problems, receiving strange looks from those we pass by, but somehow the burdens of all that we suffer feel lighter as we journey together.

Please pray for us and be confident that we, as a community, are praying for you! May Jesus gently and mercifully call you to something radically new during this Lenten season, and may your encounter with Him radically transform your heart!