I painted the cross small, because I don’t think I’m the only one who minimizes hard experiences at their outset. One way of coping with coming pain is to tell ourselves that it’s not going to be that bad. And when we begin the journey to our own personal crosses, it often really isn’t that bad at first. The upset of change hasn’t really taken hold yet, and we have a lot of old resources to draw on. It’s only when we realize that the process of change will take a long time, and that those resources will diminish and maybe be forgotten, that the true agony of bearing our crosses really sets in. So here, at the beginning of Jesus’s journey to his crucifixion, the cross is rather small, although still significant.
