We seem to always look for the short cut, the fastest route, or the road that avoids all the curves and unpaved roads.
At least that's what I do. Not only when I am driving but in all other areas of my life. Not that it is wrong to look for the path of least resistance...
but somewhere along the way, we started believing that God is the pathway of least resistance. Which is simply not true.
"formulas and recipes have to do with predictability and certainty. We plug in the numbers, figures, and ingredients in order to get a specific result, a desired outcome... a life of 100 percent success, wealth, health, and opportunity... and in the process we strip life of any risk, mystery and adventure. It doesn't seem as though Jesus ever gave his disciples a blueprint on what they could expect in the journey that awaited them." - Kyle Lake
So God doesn't promise safety and security. Because it seems very few people in Scripture have the "American Dream" of a life. Whether it is Ruth, who's husband and two sons died, that said The Lord has brought calamity on her or any other of the disciples of Jesus who a lot of whom were murdered.
How should we respond when our life doesn't go as planned? Blame God? Buy more self-help books to finally fix ourselves? Crumble under the weight of failure?
I'm not sure if any answer I give here will suffice for you. Maybe you should wrestle and contemplate this thought.
2 comments:
I think the 'American dream' doesn't bring safety and security anyway. The people who seem to have accumulated the most $$$ and toys seem to have more stress than those of us who aren't so set on consumption.
Although I agree that a life of least resistance isn't what God has in mind, I don't think that going his way is necessarily going to end up like Job.
Lowered expectations of what life and/or God owes you, aims a person in a direction that few of us might be comfortable with--but it is a life with deeper rewards.
Great comment Al. Realizing that God owes us nothing is quite humbling. But even that everything we do is owed unto God, as Anselm said.
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