If ease is the goal of your day, there is a very good chance that the path you desire is not the one being dictated by the Lord. Our God has a long history of taking His children along the circuitous route.  Life with Him is never promised or slated as ‘easy.’ If your desires are for the path of least resistance, of ease, comfort, fluidity, certainty, or full disclosure, He’s not the Man for you.

Consider the daily lives of most Americans.  We eat ‘comfort food,’ we listen to the instruction of ‘time-saving’ electronics, we spend our money on that which isn’t even good, but is ‘fast.’ To most of us, if it isn’t easy that’s only because we haven’t invented the technology yet to perfect the process—but fear not, it’s on its way!

To endure that which isn’t easy simply isn’t sensible.  It isn’t necessary, economical, or wise.  The path of least resistance is well trodden and therefore easier to travel.

We all hold some level of belief in the validity of that thought. But is it biblical?

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter.                                 Exodus 13:17

I know your affliction and your poverty-yet you are rich!             Revelation 2:9

In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the world.                                                                                                                  John 16:33

Consider this: all but one of the original 12 disciples died a horrible, tragic, and painful martyr’s death.  And the last of the 12 was exiled in his old age only after, tradition holds, he was dropped into a boiling vat of oil only to escape unscathed!  Peter was crucified (upside down); Andrew was also crucified, but with ropes rather than nails to increase the duration of his pain; tradition holds that James the son of Alphaeus was very old at his martyrdom but that didn’t stop them from beating, stoning, and then clubbing him in the head!  They were beaten, stabbed, crucified, skinned, tortured.  Paul faired no better, his list of ills takes up many verses of his second letter to the Corinthians (chapter 11).

A New Testament occurrence alone?  Nope, the Israelites went many spells of numerous days without water in the desert.  Jacob laid his head to rest on rocks in the woods, was royally screwed over by his in-laws, and endured a lifetime of backbiting amongst his wives (not that he didn’t deserve a little of that torment!)  Abraham feared for his life among foreign peoples, to the point he felt compelled to lie and allow his wife to be taken by another (Genesis 12).  Levites were asked to kill their own brothers and children and friends at the base of Mt. Sinai (check Exodus 32). This list could get very long and follow the same theme precisely.

Life with the Lord is not a historically easy road.

I truly believe that almost all of us would say that this is a truth that we all concede to, grasp, and agree with.

Why then do we attempt to live our lives so centrally focused on the idea of finding ease?

Why do we dismiss that which is too difficult as being unrefined or poorly devised?  Why do we so often search out the ‘easy’ route?  Really sit down and think about how much of our lives is dictated by attempts and finding or following ease—from electronics that make answering questions easier, to chains that make feeding our families easier, to google maps that chart for us the easiest route, to contraptions making it easier to haul all the items necessary to make things easier!

Perhaps you tell people your day is going beautifully because it is easier than explaining the pain that’s marked your morning.

Perhaps you don’t tell co-workers that you’re a Christian because it’s easier than having to answer their deriding inquisitions of why.

Perhaps you talk only of others—their faults, their lives, and their persona—because it’s easier that talking about where you are.

Perhaps you leave the radio on all day because it’s easier than being left alone with yourself.

Perhaps you table the tough talks with your children, the discipline and guidance, because it’s easier than trying to slate out the one-on-one time in your busy schedule.

Perhaps you don’t make the time to be still before the Lord because it is just plain easier to not add one more seemingly unproductive thing to your calendar.

Perhaps.

Perhaps this isn’t at all what life with the Lord is supposed to look like.

Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.                         Matthew 7:13-14

Finding that which is hidden and valuable isn’t easy.  Be the few.