So Reality stands before us and we must choose—not once, but over and over and over again–to cast ourselves upon it and be broken…or to be crushed to powder by it. Reality does not just crush us all at once. If we remain under it’s weight, struggling to get away from it, it slowly grinds and grinds us into powder. Bit by bit fragments of our being are worn away and scattered to the wind.

Everyday I find myself, once again, under the crushing weight of Reality, allowing it to slowly grind me to powder. But everyday I find that I can cry out and be delivered–delivered from being crushed, but not from being broken. I must choose, moment by moment, to cast myself upon the Reality of the circumstances that He has given me and be broken….or I will end up back under it. Either way, there is no escaping What Is.

If I had a broken arm that had not been properly set and had grown crooked, I would have to have it broken again in order to make it straight. It is not a whole and healthy body that I cast down to be broken. It is my bent and twisted body. And He has provided Reality–Himself–to break me in order that I might be put back together, the right way.

Reality is my Cross, given to me to crucify and strip away my rotting, leprous flesh, to kill it in order that it can be resurrected in blessed newness, wholeness and health. As with the Cornerstone, there is the choice: To hang there on His left and curse the cross, my Reality–Him. Or to hang on His right, embrace my cross, and cry out, even in my suffering, “Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom!”