I haven't used our blog for this purpose yet, but I thought I might share a few of my thoughts with you on some topics I have discussed in the past few years. Maybe one day I will have the opportunity to use these "comments" as a springboard for more thoughtful prose.
Disclaimer: I take full responsibility for my comment. After rethinking any given issue, I will take the privilege of revoking previous statements.
My comments may not reflect/accurately reflect the opinions of other members of my household.
An easier life....Is that what we're all striving for? Do we hope that after this stage of life or season things will get better? After college? After the first few years of marriage? After the first year on the new job? After the kids get out of diapers? After the kids move out? After we retire? The question though is why do we all expect or desire things to get better. Isn't this possibly a modern or modern American ideal? The more we have and the bigger it is and the quicker it works - all that is going to make life easier. If we just keeping working at "it," "it" is going to get easier. Eventually, we will manufacture a life that is easy to operate. Everything will run just the way we want it to run, and we will be happy.
Having discussed some characters from Wendell Berry's fiction with Rusty, I want to conjecture that our great-grandparents and those before them accepted that life was going to be hard. They may have strove for a better life, working hard to provide for their families, but did they strive for an easier life? I think they knew providing for their families and canning and raising babies and growing old and dealing with grief were all going to be hard, so they naturally weren't set up for so much disappointment. But, when we want everything to be easy and make us happy, we are naturally going to be disappointed because if we've lived for any time at all, we know life is going to be hard and every season is going to have its own set of challenges.
As believers, we have to ask if hoping for life to get easier is biblical. Based on my reading of the Bible, I seem to think that we shouldn't expect life to get any easier until Jesus' returns.
"Count it all joy, brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds..." James 1:7
"a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance..." Eccl. 3:4
"If they persecute me, they will also persecute you." John 15:20
"...provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him." Rom. 8:17
If this is the case, are we setting our minds on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, or overall excellent (Phil. 4:8) by striving for an easier life? Are we learning to be content in whatever situation we are in (Phil. 4:11) by striving to make life easier? As you read this, you must realize that I'm not negating the many blessings of walking with the Lord - those things that come with being filled with the Spirit - love and joy and peace... I'm only trying to encourage us not to wish for the easier life according to the world's standards. Our hope should be set in what is ahead.
