I like things to be easy.
I’ve come to the conclusion this is a bad thing. I think everyone likes things to be easy to a certain degree, but the some of the best things in life aren’t easy. Did Martin Luther King Jr. give up because his road was hard and filled with danger? Did Jesus give up his mission to save those who were lost because it involved a cross?
No.
Do I give up and take the easy way out?
Often I do, and I’m supposed to be following Jesus.
“Take up your cross daily, and follow me.” Jesus said that, didn’t he? He also said something that sounds so paradoxical to that no wonder some people called him crazy.
“My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Does that mean that the hard road, filled with burdens, tough forgiveness, and the cross is easy?
Maybe it does. Maybe us in America, especially me, want life to be easy and are so consumed with our technology and easy consumerism that we forego any difficulties. Maybe the very difficulties God is trying to use to purify us.
I’m so consumed with easy. Maybe that’s why being in a long distance relationship is hard. Because I want to be like all the couples at college, together and easy. But if I really love her then hard is merely a word in the way of everything I really want. Hard is not “hard” but a challenge to rise to, an obstacle in the way of something truly beautiful.
I’ve never thought of it in that way before. That could be why I fail. Fail to step up to the plate. Fail to be a man so often, and let other people do things that I could do. Maybe I can’t do them by myself.
“You are my strength when I am weak,” so goes the lyric in the popular song.
I’m always weak. Therefore God should always be my strength. With God I can do anything, including actually being a person that can hurdle the obstacles I face. God can make me into the man I need to be, because I can’t do any of it myself.
But letting God do this involves me throwing my entire being onto Him, and letting him work in my life. It includes giving him all my dreams and hopes, and inevitably being thrown into situations where I am uncomfortable. Am I ready for that? Can I afford to not be ready for that?
Life is not about what I can do for myself, but what I can do for God. What I can do for God is let him use me, and if I do that everything else works out. I say that a lot. I say a lot of things a lot. Do I follow them? I wish I could say I do. I wish and pray that I would stop being proud of my awareness of issues and actually do something about them.
And I can. But not by myself. Especially not when “easy” is what I live my life for. If I want the easy that people think about I should give up on all my aspirations for life and love.
Maybe God’s road is easy because of its hardships, not despite of them. Those hardships form character that forms a foundation of a life for a person who is truly alive. A person that is so confident in the grace and forgiveness of God that their problems seem like shadows compared to the glorious light of his face. A person who finds their strength in the glory of God and his sustaining power. A person that loves because they can’t do anything else because they are so wrapped up in the love of Christ. A person that is secure in Christ and is humble and confident that their opinions and talents have nothing to do with themselves.
That is the person I want to be, and I’m a long way off. In the words of U2, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” but I know where it is.
So reject the false promises of easy. The prosperity gospel and “best life now’s”. They aren’t true, and are antithetical to the Gospel itself. The road of Christ is filled with suffering and passion, but also miracles and salvation. Redemption is often found in the darkest places of humanity, in particular inside each and every one’s heart. A light is shining that promises an easy yoke, but a hard road, and a narrow one. It’s hard to balance and we all fall, but God can pick us back up. I’m still learning this and I hope that you can learn it too.
Every new beginning…
11 years ago
2 comments:
Heyo. Nice blag.
In some ways our culture makes things easy... like being able to go to the fast food joint and get a prepared meal, and not have to worry about anything really dangerous, not having to worry about transportation or communication or money and all of that.
In other ways, our culture makes things a lot more difficult than they ever were. "Making it" in society now means playing along and putting tons of years and work into an education and then a job, cost of living, mowing our big lawns and paying rent and insurance and mortgages and the like. We've structured society so that it's not feasible to get married young, even though historically we always have. We're busy and we don't have time for anything anymore.
I think maybe we sometimes overlook the ridiculous amount of preparation and maintenance our modern lives require. Maybe there's something to be said about realizing the way our society makes things difficult for us, and letting ourselves learn the lessons we can find there.
On any given day, I have a very tough time finding energy into doing anything substantial about what Christ said for me to do. There's tons in scripture that's pretty straightforward that I read and then effectively ignore. Our culture complicates things, and I think we do too. I think the tough part for us is looking simply at truth, and then doing something simple about it.
I agree with what both of you have had to say on the word "easy". Additionally, I think what was meant, by "my yoke is easy, and my burden is light", can be summed up in one word, Honesty.
Society and culture (for typical Americans) has centered around convenience. We have convinced ourselves to ignore the truth about life, about what is really important, about the purpose of life. As such our 'yoke' is 'hard'. It is much more difficult to live a lie than to live the truth. To live a lie means the truth must be buried inside ourselves. To live a lie means we have to live through multiple identities, we have to live up to society's expectations even though we know it is shallow.
Life becomes very "easy" when we live for the truth. Decisions become simple. We no longer have to remember all of our false images and remember what mask to put on for what crowd.
God wants us to be who we really are and quit living lies. This is the only way to freedom. Freedom or the "easy yoke" comes when give up the lie and face the truth within ourselves. Of course this is not 'easy', but once we attain a life of truth, life does become easy. We are not worried about how we are judged by others but only how we are judged by God. The first and 'hardest' step to freedom is facing the darkness that we filled ourselves, facing the demon inside us, facing our weaknesses.
Humanity long ago learned how to replace the challenge facing our weakness with all sorts of distractions. When we are sad we consume drugs to make us happy again. When we are lonely we make friends with the wrong crowds or form relationships with people we really are not in love with. When we are horny we appease our body and become enslaved to our lust. When we are angry we turn to violence and hatred. When we are bored with our lives we turn to gossiping about others. Even our own children and unborn children have become too inconvenient for us. And all the while we fill ourselves with all these selfish distractions and completely blind ourselves to the truth in life. True happiness comes with living a true life, a life of servitude, humility, and love for others and God.
However it is not easy for us to live perfect lives as the one described above. We will always be challenged by ourselves, others, and world in general. This does not mean we cannot achieve happiness. Happiness first comes from facing our challenges and overcoming them. When we fail we ask for forgiveness and move on. We are most vulnerable when we are hopeless. So always have hope and always have love.
Peace
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