G.K. Chesterton famously wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” It can be difficult, but there is a reason that our sign, our banner, is that of Our Savior on a cross! “If the world hates you,” He said, “realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:18-20). Jesus asks us to follow Him, but so often when following Him means enduring the cruel streets of Jerusalem all the way to Calvary and to the Cross, we turn away, we try to bargain, to escape, but when we forfeit the Cross we forfeit the Resurrection. Let us never be discouraged, then, when we struggle in our Christian lives; the struggle, the cross, is part of it and means we are on the right path; “you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.”