The Invitation

The invitation is to follow Christ.  He makes no promises about the destination or even what will happen on the journey.  Sure, there is the promise of the ultimate destination when the journey is all over, and there is the promise that He will always be with us on the journey.  Not to minimize these, but what about the everyday promises? What about food on the table and a roof over your head?  What about healthy kids and good friends?  What about the respect of those you admire or those you lead?  What about all the things that we have been led to expect from life, from God?  Does He promise these?

If I believe what the Christian bookstores sell, then yes, He does, but I don't believe them.  I don't believe that "every day with Jesus is sweeter than the one before."  I don't believe that He promises that we will be healthy, wealthy, and wise.  I don't believe that following Him will always lead to light and bliss.  I don't believe that we'll always come out on top (in this world) or that we will be rewarded for doing the right thing.  Sometimes doing the right thing means being executed, or slowly being starved to death.  Sometimes following Jesus leads us into trouble not away from it.  A quick examination of the lives of the prophets, or the lives of the vast majority of Christians in our time and the ages before us, shows us that it is an anomaly to have a nice life and also follow Christ.

So, I reject the "face value wisdom and happy lies" that promise something that Jesus never actually promised.  He did promise that He would be with us.  He promised that He would send us the Spirit to comfort us and to lead us.  He promised that He would complete the good work that He began in us.  Ah, there's the rub.  To complete the good work of redeeming my soul and making me more like Himself, He has to lance the painful, infected, places in my soul.  He has to take me to face the hurt, the darkness, the pain in my own soul.  It's not just that there is sin "out there", that the world is sick and infected and therefore not as it should be and so we suffer in this world.  It's that I am sick and infected and not as I should be. 

So, I choose again today to follow Him.  Not because it will be easy, or will lead to all the worldly happiness that I crave, but because He is God and He is good.  He is good even when He takes me by the hand and leads me down in to valley of the shadow of death.  For dying to myself is a real death with real suffering.  I believe that He inflicts this pain because it is the only way for me to be healed.  I hate the pain, but I love the soul surgeon who inflicts it.