(Sept. 16) Sun. Snippet

Mark 8:31-38

After giving a speech in Australia the famous psychiatrist Dr. Frankl was given a boomerang as a gift.  He thought for a few minutes and then said that he felt the boomerang symbolized human existence. 

 

People assume that the function of a boomerang is to return to the thrower.  But this isn't true.  The boomerang returns to the thrower only when it misses the target.  The same is true in life, he said.  We return to ourselves to become self-centered and self-absorbed when we have failed to find meaning in life.  If we live only for ourselves, spend our money only on ourselves, if we squander our time, and exert our strength only for those things that please only us, we pay the price, in the end, of a meaningless existence.

 

I think the above analysis coincides well with what Jesus had to say in Mark’s gospel: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

 

Christ doesn’t want any of us to miss the target….especially since he is the target (and he goes to great lengths to tell all of us what to do in order to hit the target; deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow, he says). 

Whatever that cross of yours may be―you know the one I’m talking about....the one you’ve been dealing with for years now....the one you're still carrying around.  The time has come for you to get control of it, correct it, let go of it and follow the path of new light...for whoever let's go of their life, saves it.

 

Thanks be to Christ our Lord who was the first to deny himself, pick-up the cross and follow in the footsteps of God’s divine will.  Thanks be to God for the Christian boomerang….for after the Christian boomerang hits the target it returns back to us over and over again…. in the shape of a Cross… reminding us to pick up our cross and follow in the footsteps of Christ our resurrected Lord.