THE CROSS

"The second command Jesus gives in Mark 8:34 is not so easy to define. In Jesus' time, no one ever took up a cross unless they were going to die on it. How do we "take up our cross?" The idea has such a mystical, super-spiritual sound to it. Some have even gone so far as to allow themselves to be crucified in a modified way to show identification with Christ. But your "cross" is not literal; it is instead an attitude of radical obedience to God in which you willingly accept any consequence for Jesus' sake. If denying yourself is all about saying no, then taking up the cross is all about saying yes. "Yes, God, I will do whatever you ask of me -- whatever, whenever."
~Kay Warren, Dangerous Surrender: What Happens When You Say Yes to God

VALUE TIME

VALUE TIME
Every day, every second, carries with it its own finality. Time is our one indisputably nonrenewable resource. 'Where did the time go?' we ask when we sense we have spent the years wrongly or have taken some great gift for granted. And the answer, of course, is that it went to the same place it always has. At the end of every day, one more box in the calendar has been shifted from the future column to the past column, from possibility to history. And all of its moments can be remembered, can be celebrated or regretted, but can never be retrieved. The philosopher Simone Weil wrote, 'All the tragedies that we can imagine can be reduced to just one: the passage of time.' Life is one of those games in which you can only move forward. Life does not have a rewind button, so we must seek to get it right the first time."
~John Ortberg, When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box