Take Up Your Cross
Dear parents,
We have been on quite a journey together through Lent into the Easter Season. As we look ahead to May and June we will discuss the dignity of gender—the feminine and masculine respectively. What a gift it is to explore God’s design for the human person. We pray these resources will be helpful for you as you teach your children how wondrously and precisely He created them in His own image and likeness!
However, before we transition towards this focus on gender, we want to anchor ourselves in Christ’s command to “take up your cross daily and follow me.” (Lk 9:23) When we choose to live as a witness to Christ’s love in today’s culture we are saying “yes” to the cross.
Make no mistake, our Lord knows the culture we face in 2023; He knows the the weight of the cross we bear upon our shoulders, and the difficult journey ahead. He chose us for today, we were chosen for this spiritual battle. We must trust that He equips us with the grace necessary to carry our cross across this battle field with eyes fixed on heaven.
This week, talk with your child about the beauty of carrying the cross of discipleship. Below is an excerpt from our Pray, Grow, & Serve that helps us communicate to our children the fruit of carrying our cross well.
“Have you ever seen a beautiful piece of blown glass? It is an exquisite piece of glass art that has been formed by the hard work and breath of a glass smith. Blown glass begins as a lump of raw material such as sand and recycled glass and is placed into a fiery hot furnace where it turns into a molten lump of goo! The glass smith works with the material, bending, twisting, and breathing life into it, sometimes close to its breaking point. In time, the material forms into a beautiful piece of art.
These pieces of glass move through quite a journey toward perfection by their creator. This is much like the Christian life. Our Creator breathes into us, sometimes allowing us to bend and twist by the crosses in our life until we are well formed.”
Download the Pray, Grow, Serve this week and commit to walking through our gender series starting next week!
