Take Up Your Cross
Reading the Warning Label of Discipleship
Welcome to today’s reflection.
Each day through Lent, we slow the pace and make space to reflect on the deeper invitations of faith, not as abstract ideas, but as lived realities woven into ordinary life.
Today’s reflection invites us to consider the cost of discipleship, the shape of surrender, and the promise hidden within the words:
“Take up your cross and follow me.”
I once bought a jar of peanut butter that warned me it may contain nuts.
A revelation, I felt, that could have been assumed.
This started a compulsion to check labels for strange warnings. Once you get the bug, you notice them everywhere. A camping stove advising me that fire is dangerous. A hair dryer instructing me not to use it in the shower. Even a pictorial diagram of a hand placed in flames with a bold red cross through it, just in case common sense needed visual reinforcement.
We live in an age of common-sense warnings.
Some are faintly ridiculous. Others are absolutely necessary.
I laughed when I first saw the warning on a McDonald’s apple pie telling me it was hot. Of course, it was hot; I wanted it hot. Until I bit into it and molten apple liquid slid down my chin like lava. In that moment, the label did not feel patronising at all. It felt merciful.
Warnings exist because we are remarkably good at assuming the risk applies to someone else. We skim over them, convinced we will be fine.
And then we come to Lent.
