Posted on 12-Aug-2014
Special feature by Corporal Nathan Chan of 10th Kuala Lumpur Company 
As much as we would like it to be, life is not a bed of roses. It is instead rampant with pain, suffering, cruelty, and occasionally trouble.. gigantic earth-rattling trouble. In fact, we have been told that as Christians, trouble is to be expected. Trouble will come, and it will come and crush us to the point where we are almost completely smothered.
In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (John 16:33 NIV)
But take heart, he says. Even when the weight of the world bearing down, take heart. Even when there is no end to the darkness, take heart! Don’t give up just yet, for Jesus has overcome the world. This is our hope.
Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; (Hebrews 6:19 KJV)
The book of Hebrews was written in a time of trouble. It was written in a time where Christians suffered much persecution. The persecutor? Nero Claudius Caesar, the Emperor who "fiddled while Rome burned".
We all need a hand when under fire. We all need somewhere to turn to when life hurts. This anchor we have been given is just that - the cross. We may get shipwrecked, we may get lost, but we have this anchor for the soul, keeping us from being simply blown off the picture.
At the cross, we are reminded that God loves us. Christ died for us, as God gave His only son. His son, on the cross, bearing excruciating pain and humiliation. Worse still, as He bore our sins, He bore His own Father’s wrath. The unimaginable cost of such an act demonstrates the depth of this love.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)
At the cross, we see that God allows freedom, yet maintains control. At the cross, men crucified Jesus. Mere hours before the crucifixion, the people were given a choice - free a criminal, a murderer and a thief, or free Jesus, who really hadn’t done anything wrong. Against all logic, the crowd screamed for the criminal to be freed, for Jesus to be crucified. It was a mob gone crazy, yet through the chaos, we see God in charge. At the cross, we see God using the worst of situations for eternal good. It is ironic that we call the day Jesus died Good Friday. Standing at the cross on that day, it was the worst thing that ever happened. The Son of God was beaten, stripped naked and essentially strangled to death on a wooden beam for everyone to see. What could be worse? Yet today, we see the cross as the center of our faith.Thus we see that in the mosaic God has built, even the worse events are part of something beautiful.
Sure and stedfast. An anchor for the soul. This is our motto, that though life may hurt, we have a hope sure and stedfast - the cross where Our Saviour died.