It has been said that the secret to a happy life is learning how to avoid pain. We certainly live in a day in which this philosophy holds sway. Ours is a comfort-at-any-cost, I-want-it-now society; a society that trumpets, “It's all about me!” Yet, what the world shuns as foolishness, the Lord embraces as wisdom—the wisdom of pain to turn mere followers of Christ into disciples of Christ. Jesus called it “the cup.” To Him the cup was the anguish, humiliation, and torturous death on the cross. To us it means “taking up our cross” and following Him daily.