In today's gospel we have the challenge to daily pick up our cross and follow Jesus. Our cross is not the same cross as the cross of Jesus. We each have a different cross to carry and just as Jesus did not get to choose his cross, neither do we. Jesus' cross was not just the wooden beams he carried to Golgotha. Jesus embraced his cross each and every day. His cross was his willingness to be faithful to God's will and to embrace his successes and failures and mixed-results each day as he tried to love others as God loves him.

We don't need to go looking for our cross - that's a veiled way of trying to choose our own rather than accepting the one God has for us - because like a faithful pet it will be there waiting to greet us each and every day. Will we embrace it? Everyday?

What profit is there if one gains the whole world but loses one's life? How many lives have been wrecked when a career or hobby has taken precedence over family, friends, and spouse? How many lives are empty and founder because people have been distracted or duped and conformed themselves to our age rather than being transformed by their relationship with God and by embracing the cross? We only truly find our lives when we lose them to Christ, when we live in the present moment with God, seeking to know God's will for us and to keep it. What profit is there in it? It's a thing called heaven -- not just after our death, but here and now as well.