Day 4066 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 4:17 NIV

The hope of hardship

Though something of a seemingly unknown concept, the truth is that all hardship exists to remind us of the better, the stronger, the deeper and more devoted, determined, disciplined we were both created to be and indeed still called to become. The struggle it seems comes from the fact that we’ve in fact not become all we can be but are rather a people vastly prone to proving ourselves mostly intent upon only staying whoever, whatever we are and that likely only wherever we stand presently.

Why?

Because moving is hard, especially when said moving is on.

This is something all of us have experienced plenty of times in each of our lives. We’ve all had these things, these thoughts, these theories that just seemed so genuine, so hopeful, so well thought out that we didn’t think there could ever be anything found in their outcomes that could come back to bite us or betray us or break us. But they did. We’ve all experienced dreams dying, plans going up in smoke, our greatest of hopes held to the flames of failure as we solemnly watched on as they faded into a nothingness we never would have imagined they’ve eventually become.

And it sucks. In fact I think this is why everyone seems so upset and angry anymore. Let’s face it, the world’s not turned out to be anything like what any of us probably imagined it would. I mean, when we were kids we truly didn’t know how good we had it in what were habits so wild and free that we didn’t have it within us to see the heaviness of growing up. Rather we were still able to find no reasons as to why we couldn’t all reach the stars if we wanted to. Didn’t have any cause to imagine that our bikes couldn’t really fly.

Didn’t think there’d ever come a time in which we’d live just to die a little more every day to everything that was the sum of every plan, every dream that we ever had.

No, for such is the identity of hope! It’s something that expects good no matter what it takes to get there nor through what the going goes. It demands the best and refuses to even contemplate anything less. Hope carries with it this adamancy upon its finding the very outermost extremities of beauty, of purpose, of meaning. Hope refuses to bend or back away as it instead believes only in this specific day in which everything is finally as it should be as was defined long ago by this innocence of heart that didn’t realize that life was hard.

That’s something we find out is a life-long lesson as we live more of it.

And indeed, I truly believe that this is why we’re all called to a childlike faith. It’s because as children we don’t know to see things through the stained eyes we have as an adult. We’ve yet to come upon the pity won within whining and complaining about how miserable we are. We don’t have it in us to grasp the gravity of griping and yet gripping on so tightly to that which makes us so unhappy. For kids are just happy. I’ve literally seen a child reduced to tears as they fall and scrape their knee only to stand up, brush it off and be laughing in the very next breath.

Kids are awesome like that as their ability to hope is so utterly resilient that nothing they experience can seem to steal it.

No, it takes being a grown up to give it away.

Which is something that I must sadly say I dare think we’ve all done. And why do I say that? Just look at how miserable we’ve become. Truly, nothing is ever good enough anymore. We’re never happy, know nothing of contentment, are rather always upset over the content of our current as it’s presently just not quite perfect. Indeed, we’ve become so selfishly arrogant that we each exist as if all of life owes us something. As if everyone alive owes us something.

This is why driving goes from one of the most exciting rites of passage as beheld by a teenager to something of a chore seen through the eyes of someone who’s so angry and sleep-deprived that they swear all the time as everyone else around them on the road just isn’t managing to do it right.

Indeed, road rage is perhaps one of the best examples of just how ill-equipped we’ve all become in regard to handling hardship, adversity, patience even.

Truly, it’s as if we’ve all become patients of impatience as we seem to all wake up and take our dose of it right out the gate! We cannot wait to be upset or put off or elsewise just simply irritated by the simplest of inconvenience.

Ain’t no wonder we can’t take it when God asks of us any of all the He deserves from us.

It’s because we’ve lost the ability to see it that way. Again, selfishly arrogant! But honestly, everything anymore is seen from only inside this most singular perspective in which we ourselves have determined our idea of our life’s perfection and now exist as if our only job, our only purpose is to at least safeguard this ideal if not pour everything we have unto ensuring it materializes.

A problem made even worse because we can’t seem to make our minds up most of the time.

Rather our idea of a life ideal is something that changes nearly every single day thanks to the way in which this world’s chosen to work what is a will that wants for us to want something new all the time. That’s why they release new smart phones every year. It ain’t because last years’ model stopped working! No, it’s because we’ve become chronic consumers of what are such little advances that we don’t even stop to ask ourselves if we truly need the update.

We just can’t risk being left behind and so, yeah, a slightly larger screen is probably a good thing.

Except that it isn’t because it again only accomplishes helping us to see what the world wants to show us, and truthfully, that’s only every way to be unhappy. And if you don’t believe me, do yourself a monumental disservice and hop over to youtube for a minute. I guarantee that what you’ll find is a collection of “professionals” who are there to literally convince you that pretty much everything you’re doing is wrong, unhealthy, unhelpful, somehow bad for you.

We’re so set on being miserable that we’ve taken something (the internet) which could have been used for what it seems like it was created for (learning and growth and other hogwash like that) and rather turned it into this glorified self-help system in which all we ever really learn is that we’re doing everything wrong and pretty much anything we dare to eat is likely going to kill us before long.

See what I’m saying?

We’ve literally created, accepted, adopted this system of living a life in which we pretty much actively seek out ways to be told we’re wrong about something, not to actually do anything about it, but just to have what amounts to nothing but one more reason that our lives aren’t perfect.

Social media’s become the same monster.

It was something designed to keep in touch with friends and family, to share things with those you love but can’t spend time with all that often. What has it become? Basically a breeding ground for pride and opinion within which everyone exists only to watch this really strange blend of someone else’s perfect life (as designed behind filters and lies) mixed with the misery that is every comment section in which everyone just argues about who knows what.

All of it chosen because we need a distraction from the fact that our lives aren’t perfect and, even more so, that we’ve chosen to just settle for that.

All of it because we’ve chosen to give up hope because we’ve seemingly forgotten that the hardships we hate are arguably the very best ways for us to grow our hope. Instead we’ve so settled upon these personally held ideals blended always with our nearly perfect impatience and arrived at lives in which we live as if we’re owed our rewards instantly. It’s called instant gratification and it’s the reason that nobody can even pay attention anymore.

It’s because we run on dopamine as is dripped from our constantly being pleased, impressed, surprised or esteemed. We love this high we get out of getting a like on our recent post or some new joke we didn’t know as is shown in a quick 30-second video we watch until the new wears off and the boredom comes back. All that only proof that we’ve all but determined to lose every chance we’ve ever had and have still at what is a gift unlike any other we’ve ever been given:

Perseverance.

Indeed, we loathe even the mention of something so suggestive of such things as hardship, misery, pain even. No, we’re rather doing our absolute best to build a world in which we know nothing of even personal responsibility! How dare anyone ever suggest we willingly, humbly agree to endure what are hard things like waiting, praying, hoping for something better as can literally only be defined by our experiencing of something that is obviously less than what we’d prefer?

Don’t we understand the point of preferences?

They’re not meant to have formed these now all but concreted opinions that act as if idols that we can’t bear to imagine our lives going on without. Rather preferences are nothing more than singular points of view as are determined based upon our personal weighing of what is against what could be either better or worse.

Take drinking water for example. I literally drink only water every single day, will throw in some hydration stuff every now and then because I work out in the heat and sweat a lot in what is a physical job. But outside of the occasional electrolyte help, I drink nothing but water. That’s my preference as I personally think it better, healthier than anything else.

My grandma despises plain water but gushes over how much she loves pepsi.

To me pepsi is poison.

But that doesn’t mean that she’s a bad person for drinking it nor that I’m a monster for thinking it dangerous.

It’s just a difference of perspectives based upon a difference of preference.

Both of which have been formed by our each having determined what we like as defined against what we don’t.

But do you see my point?

It’s that in order for us to know what we like, what we enjoy, what we prefer, we have to have at least some understanding of what we don’t like, what we don’t enjoy, what we then do not prefer.

Friends, how is something so simple as this suddenly deemed unmanageable when it’s expanded to fit the size and scope of our existence?

For the honest truth is that hardship is nothing more than something we ourselves understand based upon our preferences. I’ll give you another example: Exercise. I personally love it. I love the fight, the struggle, the mental battle that is waged between my inherent weakness and laziness wanting me to always do nothing but sit on my rear and eat junk food and that of my desire to be healthier and feel better and get stronger and remain upright and viable refusing to agree. I love the soreness that is evidence that I pushed myself. I love the sweat that is my body literally crying for help!

Love it all!

Most folks probably wouldn’t agree.

Because it is hard. It does hurt. It is definitely a struggle to push yourself to those places that your body physically doesn’t want to go and those your mind is truly afraid of venturing toward.

But friends, how else can we know what we’re capable of? How else can we at first understand our limits and then seek to build them out a little further so that we’re a little more able to do a little better? How else are we to get stronger unless we’ve agreed to place a load upon ourselves and see what we can or cannot do with it?

Do you see the point yet?

It’s that every hardship in life, those things that we do not like as they are hard, because they do hurt, because they push us and test us and threaten to break us and beat us and leave us broken and bloodied, they’re there to help us find out both who we are, and once we realize the often solemn truth of that, a determination to become something better.

Why?

Because God has not given us a spirit of fear, of worry, of weakness that wants for us only to exist. No, He gave us a Spirit of life that wants to live, that wants to strive, that wants to find the very best of life and refuses to settle for anything less! Problem is that we’ve decided that everything less than all of His best isn’t that bad. Not because we like whereever, whatever, whoever we already are but simply because anything better is only found on the other side of hard work.

And we hate hard work.

In truth, we even hate easy work. We won’t even go to the grocery store anymore, both because most folks don’t know how to cook and fast-food is both more addictive and they even bring it to your door these days.

We are the single most coddled civilization in all of human history.

And what do we have to show for it?

Skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, heart issues, cancer, physical impairment, mental-problems, addictions to literally everything under the sun and an ongoing unwillingness to do anything about it.

Because again, doing something that requires us to change is simply seen as asking too much.

Something we believe so much that we even consider God unloving not because Christ took our place on that cross but because He dares insist we take up a personal version of the same upon which we’re meant to starve, blind, maim, butcher, literally leave daily for dead everything that’s in our lives that’s holding us back from being who He created us to be.

Because it ain’t the selfish sinners we’ve so clearly become!

No, and that leads me to what is the very best example of why there is only hope inside of hardship. And that’s the message of the Gospel! Because I can find no reason at all that Christ would so willingly agree to suffer as He did for my to only become whatever I already am. That makes no sense. Why? Because I know who I’ve been, what I’ve done, where it’s held me.

And I can say honestly that it is nobody, nothing and nowhere that I want to be.

Why?

Because fat, lonely, weak, tired, addicted and unhappy ain’t much of a life!

Trust me, I’ve been all the above and that is why I love this new version of life He’s helped me toward in which I am my worst enemy as nowadays the only times in which I’m unhappy are when I find that I’ve let myself by with something that I’d determined was unacceptable. Like not working out. Like buying more junk that I don’t need. Like eating something that I know is nothing but garbage and makes me feel horrible.

No, what I’ve found is that hardship is happiness as it achieves in us a hope that dares to keep on dreaming of the better we can still become just on the other side of some measure of struggle in life.

Because our struggles help us find our weaknesses in ways that no amount of ease or comfort ever could.

And too when we are weak then He is strong as it’s when we can’t that we finally learn that He not only can but He already has.

Yes, He has made the way but no the way is not easy. Rather the way is narrow. The path is hard. The hope is heavy because of it. But friends, if hope were easy then what would it mean? If the road were smooth then where could it go? If we could manage the walk and carry the weight and hold the line, then when would we ever need to look for Christ?

We wouldn’t.

And that’s the point. It’s that every single hardship we ever face in life is nothing more than an open door to find out both who we are, how limited that is, and how He who is our Savior has no such limits. Every pain is meant to teach us to stop doing that something that caused it. Every sorrow is supposed to help us learn how to stop giving our hearts over to the risk of their being broken again. Every sadness is something that offers us a chance to feel a fraction of what He did when He watched His Son die for a people who still sin far more than we should.

He isn’t trying to break us down, He trying to break us free by helping us to understand the weight of our mistakes and the gravity of our going against Him.

All so that He can help us come to understand all He is, all He’s done and all it means.

Because what it means is life, and well, that seems like a pretty hopeful thing to me!

Or at least it used to be.

Maybe it can be again. Maybe we can learn to stop hating the hardships that are there to help us get better, grow stronger, believe deeper. Maybe we can begin to see the suffering we experience in this life as only one more reason to hope for Heaven where all that’s here isn’t welcome to come. Maybe we could even go so far as to let hardship do its intended work of humbling us to the point in which we finally realize the true purpose of hope.

Because hope isn’t supposed to be something we have right now as a hope held is only a dream ended. No, hope is meant to be something that drives us ever onward as it inspires us ever deeper into a promise that’s indeed ever closer.

Friends, let us allow our hope to focus in on Heaven, our home, rather than insisting it exist only to continue to expect this life here to be easy.

For again, if this life were easy then for what could we hope of Heaven to be?

No, we need this life to be a war so that Heaven can be the rest He’s said it is.

So stop resting along the way and get back in the fight. Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s painless. But simply because the pain we feel now is but one more thing we can put off upon that day when He comes to lead us the rest of the way home.

For should there not always be more hope found in where we’re going than there is expected in whatever we go through on the way?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold