I am Thankful

I am thankful for so many things but central to all my gratitude is the cross. It's hard to say in non-religious terms...words that are worn, words that we have built some immunity towards. I am thank for Jesus and his willingness to be blugeoned and beaten, humiliated and massacred in order that I might have life. I am thankful to follow him...without the following the cross makes no sense. I am not freed from my sin to continue in it. Not given eternal life so that I can live a parenthesis of self aggrandized American pseudo christianity. I am freed by Jesus to follow him...it is hard...i suck at it at times and yet I am compelled by my gratitide and the awarness that without him my life is meaningless. The cross gives meaning to my wife and children, my family my friends and relationships. Without the cross of Jesus and the choice to follow him these all become transient ideas of self pursuit that end without meaning. I am mostly selfish...still trapped in the flesh...still pursuing the transformation by the reknewing of my mind...but even so I am aware that I am free, changed, trapped only by my failure to pursue Jesus. We can only enjoy the sensual pleasures of this life...our warm soft bed, a bubble bath, the contoured leather of a well crafted sedan, the giggle of our children, the gathering of family...in relation to the measure by which we understand Jesus and his cross...to enjoy apart from him, this thought of who he is and what he has done... is the height of self absorbtion.