The Cross Cuts Through All That Noise
by Donavon L Riley
We can follow the way of the needle and spoon, that path that ends in a motel room where the body, crumpled in a corner, finally surrenders. This is the road of false ecstasy, the road that seduces with promises of relief but only delivers a hollow silence. Every punctured vein becomes a desperate prayer for something—anything—that will take the pain away. But the prayer goes unanswered, and the soul slips into oblivion. The overdose isn’t just a moment, it’s a slow unraveling, a surrender that begins long before the final breath. It’s the body’s confession that life has become unbearable. But maybe we don’t fall that far. Maybe we manage to stay just above that bottom, but the addiction still haunts us, gnaws at the edges of our life, whether it’s the craving for substances, for numbness, or for a quick escape from ourselves.
Or maybe we follow the world’s other path. The one paved with ambition, shining with the lure of fame, fortune, and the seductive promise of recognition. It’s a road that gleams with possibility—until the applause fades, until the moments of success dissolve into an emptiness that no amount of accolades can fill. You chase the dream, thinking it will satisfy, but in the end, it leaves you feeling more alienated than ever. There’s a certain kind of despair that creeps in when you realize that what you’ve been working for, sacrificing for, is nothing but a mirage. You grasp at the glittering promises, but when they slip through your fingers, you’re left holding dust. This is the lie we’ve been sold—that life is a choice between oblivion or achievement, addiction or ambition. But both leave you hollowed out, lost, disconnected from anything real.
Yet, there’s a third way, a forgotten road that doesn’t gleam or shine, but has been carved out by centuries of pain and sacrifice. It’s the path of the Cross. This road isn’t paved with promises of wealth or success, nor does it offer the fleeting escape of addiction. Instead, it’s rough, demanding, and blood-stained, walked by those who’ve borne the weight of the world’s suffering on their shoulders—the martyrs, the saints, the righteous ones who walked barefoot, broken in body and mind, but unyielding in their faith. This path doesn’t dazzle you with lights or applause. It won’t promise you anything the world craves. Instead, it takes you into the heart of suffering itself, not to be consumed by it, but to be reborn. This is where you meet yourself, raw and unadorned. This is where the illusions fall away, and you face the truth of who you are.
The Cross doesn’t offer comfort, but it does offer redemption. It strips away the glittering distractions, the empty promises, and the seductive lies of the world. What it offers is renewal, a chance to be made whole again, not by avoiding the pain, but by walking straight through it. On this path, suffering isn’t something to flee from, it’s something to live through. And in that living, you find that the wounds you carry are not marks of defeat, but signs of grace, glorious scars that show where God has entered in and made you new. The Cross teaches us that it’s not about escaping the world, it’s about rising above it. It’s about resurrection, not in some distant, ethereal sense, but here, now, in the grit of daily life, in the struggles and the suffering.
This is the path that leads somewhere real, somewhere lasting. The world dazzles us with spotlights, with promises of comfort and ease, but it’s all a lie, a distraction from the deeper truth. The Cross cuts through all that noise, takes us by the hand, and leads us home. It doesn’t offer escape—it offers resurrection, a new beginning that happens not when we run from suffering, but when we stand in it, are shaped by it, and God turns it into something sacred.