{"id":4387,"date":"2025-02-03T08:45:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T13:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4387"},"modified":"2025-02-03T08:45:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T13:45:37","slug":"carry-your-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/03\/carry-your-cross\/","title":{"rendered":"Carry Your Cross"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Last month the world lost a one-of-a-kind character.

Arthur Blessitt, a self-described hippie minister, died on January 14 at the age of 84 after a lifetime of crisscrossing the planet hauling a 12-foot cross.

By his own reckoning, he walked 43,340 miles \u2013 that\u2019s about 86 million steps \u2013 through 323 countries, island groups, and territories during a pilgrimage that lasted more than 50 years. Needless to say, he wore out more than a few pairs of shoes.

Blessitt\u2019s ministry began in the midst of the West coast counterculture of the 1960s. He enthusiastically shared his trust in Jesus with bikers, rock musicians, drug dealers, and streetwalkers. He eventually made his way to Hollywood\u2019s Sunset Strip, where he opened his own joint, which he called His Place. It was essentially a nightclub for Jesus.

One day Arthur felt he received his true calling. He sensed Jesus saying to him, \u201cI want you to take that cross that is hanging on the wall at His Place and carry it across America.\u201d

As Daniel Silliman of Christianity Today<\/em> observes, \u201cThere were lots of reasons to think this was a bad idea, but the 29-year-old evangelist was committed to being obedient to what he heard God say, regardless of the consequences. A few hundred people, including his wife and young children, gathered to see him start off on Christmas Day 1969.\u201d

Months later, he reached his destination of Washington D.C.

Then he just kept going.\u00a0

After journeying to Florida, Silliman notes that he took the cross with the wheel at one end \u201cacross North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, hauling it down highways, up mountains, into deserts and jungles, through war zones, through cities and remote villages, and into countries where he did not know the language or understand the customs.\u201d

It wasn\u2019t always a walk in the park.

Several times he had to dodge bullets. He was jailed on multiple occasions and was once assaulted by a police officer. Thieves on motorcycles stole his cross in central Italy, an elephant chased him in Tanzania, a crocodile stalked him in Zimbabwe, a green mamba slithered in his direction in Ghana, and a group of Moroccans pelted him with stones.

To top it all off, someone tried to set fire to his cross in Indiana \u2013 definitely not the symbolism he was trying to convey.

What exactly was<\/u><\/em> he trying to convey?\u00a0

Blessitt was eager to tell anyone who asked that his heart, his life, and every step he took belonged to Jesus. During a half-century of travels, he told the Jesus Story thousands of times to inquirers along his path, always coming back to the reality of the cross.

Indeed, you can\u2019t make any sense of Jesus apart from the cross.

In Blessitt\u2019s final post to his website last month he wrote, \u201cThese feet that walked so far on roads of dirt and tar will now be walking on the streets of gold.\u201d His mobile cross was finally retired.

When you think about it, Jesus\u2019 cross has always been a tough sell, even from Christianity\u2019s earliest days.

As Paul told the young believers in Corinth, \u201cJews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles\u201d (I Corinthians 1:22-23).

Bible scholar N.T. Wright notes, \u201cAny self-respecting Greek or Roman with even a smattering of the noble philosophical traditions would be horrified at the idea that the ultimate revelation of the one true God might be the judicial lynching of a young Jew.\u201d

Over time, however, the cross became a way to say, \u201cJesus took the worst the world could ever throw at someone, yet he prevailed. God won his greatest victory by walking the lowest road.\u201d

That\u2019s why the cross stirs within us such extraordinary associations: God\u2019s love, God\u2019s sacrifice, God\u2019s victory. There is hope for all those who suffer and grieve in this world, for God doesn\u2019t sit on the sidelines and observe human pain with detachment. He knows and shares our pain from personal experience.

The cross is also a not-so-subtle reminder that the Lord is calling each of us to a kind of living death.

\u201dThen Jesus told his disciples,\u00a0\u2018If anyone would come after me, let him\u00a0deny himself and\u00a0take up his cross and follow me\u2019\u201d (Matthew 16:24).

This is not \u201cseeker-sensitive\u201d evangelism. This is insane. Imagine the impact that statement must have had on Jesus\u2019 original audience. The only people in Israel lugging around crossbeams were on their way to capital punishment. Their own<\/em>. Yet Jesus promises that crucifying our present lives \u2013 ruthlessly surrendering our \u201cright\u201d to always get our own way, choosing God\u2019s ways instead \u2013 will allow us to enter what can only be described as Real Life.

Jesus\u2019 cross is where evil did its worst \u2013 while at the same moment God was doing his best. No wonder those two wooden planks have become the world\u2019s most powerful symbol.

We don\u2019t have to do what Arthur Blessitt did, hauling an actual cross from continent to continent.

But our call has a drama all its own.

We get to honor God every day by living a cross-shaped, cross-defined, cross-blessed life, always ready to tell the Jesus Story to anyone who asks.

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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Last month the world lost a one-of-a-kind character. Arthur Blessitt, a self-described hippie minister, died on January 14 at the age of 84 after a lifetime of crisscrossing the planet hauling a 12-foot cross. By his own reckoning, he walked 43,340 miles \u2013 that\u2019s about 86 million steps \u2013 through 323… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[749,129,811],"class_list":["post-4387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cross","tag-discipleship","tag-witness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4389,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387\/revisions\/4389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}