We often read in the Gospels that Jesus asked His disciples to carry their cross and follow Him (Matt. 16.24). The Cross is not the difficulties we meet on the road of our discipleship. It is not poverty or sickness or antagonism. The Cross is the burden we bear because in Jesus’ name we keep on loving those who do not want us to love them.

D. T. Niles, The Preacher’s Task and the Stone of Stumbling, p. 53