You can’t go over it

RE Verse reading–Mark 15:40-47, Mark 16: 1-8 (Day three)
“You can’t go over it. You can’t go under it. You’ve got to go through it.” So goes the kids book about a bear hunt. What’s true of bear hunts is also true of following Jesus. “There were also some women looking on from a distance” (15:40). These women learned firsthand that following Jesus requires you to stand and look at the cross. Try as one might to go over the cross on the precarious scaffolding of religious devotion or to go under the cross by relativizing truth and justifying sin, the path of Jesus stubbornly, persistently leads his followers face to face with the horror of the cross. You’ve got to go through it…and face the horror of your own sin. You’ve got to go through it…and accept a substitute Savior. You’ve got to go through it…and submit to a resurrected King. You’ve got to go through it…have you faced the cross?