A Table Before Me
I am choosing easy right now—paper plates and relationships that feel uncomplicated. A few nights ago, I was thinking about what I wanted and why. I thought, “it feels easier” and by the grace of God I knew that was a good reason.
I don’t want to be those people. People who spend too much money on themselves, and don’t care about the suffering around them. People who never seem bothered, alarmed or concerned. I look at their easy life and do not see good fruit.
For so long, I didn’t choose easy because I was worried I would become those people, despite all evidence to the contrary. For too long, I believed that easy meant selfish. That to follow Jesus was not just to sacrifice but to suffer. That if life wasn’t hard, it wasn’t right. That if a theological belief felt challenging it was automatically true. That if things felt too comfortable I wasn’t carrying enough.
In this season, the easy seems unshakeable. These things I have wanted, and come to find out, needed are trickling in. It feels like I am at a ten course dinner being served plate after plate of things that feel much too easy.
And it makes me feel a lot of things. So many things that I can’t reject these courses outright. I am supposed to stay seated. This meal is for me. The ease I feel in sitting and receiving is OK.
So I am sitting—wondering if an easy life might give me more room to love people, to sacrifice for my neighbor. Could looking for a daily life that isn’t constant work and pain actually make it possible for me to be a fuller version of myself. In that fullness, could I become a better servant?
I am contemplating if suffering because we are “supposed to” is actually about as useful as a clanging gong. If I shy away from “easy” because I really believe suffering is a prerequisite for following Christ or if my choosing “hard” is an empty religious fallacy?
Maybe this week we can choose easy together. Maybe we can choose things that make our days lighter. Maybe we can be humble enough to trust that our job is to show up in our limited humanity. Maybe we can remember, or see for the first time, that our brokenness is welcomed but not required.