John 19:17

John 19:17 says, And He, bearing His cross, went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha.  They had scourged and beaten Jesus, attempted to humiliate Him by dressing Him as royalty, and now the final humiliation before His crucifixion was to have to bear His cross.  The Jewish leaders, who were the leaders of God's people, thought they were finally to be rid of Jesus, Who was indeed the long-awaited Messiah.  They were wrong.  We may sometimes say that we cannot do something that we feel God wants us to because it would be to embarrassing.  When we do, we need to remember what happened to Jesus.  When we think that God is just asking too much of us, remember Jesus carrying His cross to His crucifixion.  Though it may be portrayed otherwise in movies, I believe that Jesus' thoughts were only on the heavenly Father, as they were in the Garden.  For that reason, I believe that when we feel life has become to hard to bear, we need to turn our thoughts to the heavenly Father and focus only on His will.  If we do, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we will never be defeated by the world.  The world may think it has defeated us, but if we are true to God's calling, it never will.  Even burdened with the cross, beaten and abused, Jesus was not on His way to defeat, but to victory.  We need to remember that God has assured us the victory through the cross of Jesus.  Verse eighteen adds, Where they crucified Him, and two other with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.  The world saw Jesus as nothing special, even at His crucifixion.  He was just one of three being put to death on a cross.  As Jesus was hanging there, the religious leaders and the crowd must have felt victorious. The religious leaders probably felt self-righteous satisfaction.  They had preserved their status.  When the world sees the cross today, if it means anything, it means the defeat of a long-ago person called Jesus.  To the leaders of some religions, it means the same thing.  It was nothing special.  To the Jews today, again it was nothing special. As followers of Christ, to us it must mean everything.  There is no other way to God but through the cross of Christ.