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We Must Go Through the Cross

My friend Jason was talking to me last night about the cross of Christ, and about how any true joy in this life must flow from a true understanding and acceptance of the meaning of that cross. I dont want to get too abstract here, but to put it simply, Jason seemed to be saying that we have to first be really consumed by death in order to really gain the joy of real life. I think there is a lot to what he was saying, and it coincides with a lot of my thoughts about the Christian life in the past year. I think a lot of Christians, American Christians particularly, want to be happy and they want that happiness to be immediately accessible. They love hearing about the resurrection and the new life and the new heavens and new earth and they want to be able to rejoice in those things and feel good about them immediately. But they dont want to take the time to really mediate on the cross, on death, on the fleeting nature of this world and all that is around them. That kind of thinking just depresses them and most people in my day and age dont like to be depressed. Ive often thought there is something wrong with being depressed if Im a Christian. If I go to a big charismatic church where everybody is jumping up and down and singing really upbeat songs and raising their hands in the air, I always find myself asking "What is wrong with me? Why cant I feel that happy? Why cant I let myself go more and experience that kind of jubilation?" But Im beginning to think its not necessarily wrong to feel a certain kind of healthy depression in this life. After all, we are carrying around a body of death that is constantly being mortified by the Spirit. Death is in the very air we breathe. It constantly surrounds us. We dont like to look at it very much. Thats why we put our dying in hospitals and nursing homes where we dont have to look at them. But death is everywhere. All that we have or have hoped for in this life will ultimately fade like the grass of the field. It will whither and there is only one real hope we have for anything beyond this temporary life: resurrection. But how do we get to the resurrection? Well, how did Christ get to it? Christ's resurrection came through the cross. He had to die so that he might live again. And He was the firstfruits of our resurrection so that if we want to live as Christ lives, we must die His death. This is something we must do every day and it will of course affect our mood. Death hurts and it saddens the soul. And so Christians bear that sadness in their daily being. But that death and sadness results in the one kind of true joy that Christians can and should experience each and every day of their life, the joy of ressurection from the dead. I think a lot of Christians want to be resurrected but they dont want to die. They want to experience joy but they dont want to experience pain. And they dont understand that the two are inseparable as they are in Christ. We are a dying race, but a chosen race who hopes in the resurrection of Christ guaranteed to us through His Word and by His Spirit.