C.S. Lewis once said “If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” and quite frankly truer words haven’t been spoken.
This idea flies in the face of just about everything we see in the world today, though. There’s a premium on spiritual lifestyles that give you happiness, peace, prosperity, and whatever else you want. And if it’s not making you happy? Don’t bother with it. Move along to the next thing and see if that works.
We see this all the time amongst christians as well. I’ve been guilty of it. We don’t want to think we do it, but how often has our view of God’s goodness been completely dependent on how comfortable we are? How often does our view of God fall right along when the bottom falls out from our lives?
The plain and simple fact is that nowhere in the Bible does God say our earthly lives will be easy. Worth it? Yes. Taken care of? Yes. But easy? Not a bit. In fact, a cursory read through of the gospels shows Jesus spending a lot more time telling his followers just how hard their lives will be for following him, not easy.
If you look to Christianity to make your life easy, you will be hideously disappointed. Because that’s not the point of following Jesus. We don’t follow Jesus so everything in our lives will magically fall into place and we can just serenely move through the rest of our days unbothered by the badness of life because it can’t touch us. There is a list of martyrs as long as my arm that would like to take objection with that line of thinking.
The ease of following Christ lies not in this life but the one just beyond it. The ease is in the security. That no matter how bad things get here on earth (and believe me, they will get very bad), you are spoken for. You are claimed. Someone is going to stand up when all hope is lost and say “This one’s mine.”.
Your earthly life will be hard. Your eternal one will not. That’s what we need to be looking to, eternity. You can lose absolutely everything here on earth, but if your eternity is secure you still have what matters.
So don’t exhaust yourself expecting Jesus to make your life in this world easy or comfortable or just a little more glamorous. That’s not the point. Look to your security and find comfort in being claimed. That will serve you far better than any fleeting happiness this world could ever offer anyway.
You are claimed, Christian. Let’s get comfortable with that.
Let’s find some joy,
Avalon Robinson Author 