Life in the suburbs does not demand much.
I have to decide whether to have chicken or fish for dinner, not where my next meal will come from. I have to go to work, by driving there in a air-conditioned fully automatic car. I have to help my mother-in-law buy her medicines, by sitting in my swivel cushioned chair, order them on high speed internet, and they arrive at the front door.
When life does require something of me – when circumstances do not make me happy, when I am pushed out of my comfort zone, when I have to give up something of value – I forget the words of Jesus. He said “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”
Living in the comforts of suburbia, I forget that the Christian life is suppose to be one of sacrifice. I think it is an anomaly that I should have to face any kind of hardship, any kind of difficulties.
But the Bible seems to say that to experience the fullness of the Christian life requires experiencing something of suffering. That to gain, I have to first lose.
In my suburban lifestyle, God does not ask much of me. He does not often ask me to take up my cross. When he does ask a little of it, my first inclination is to shirk from it. I want to get out of the difficult circumstances. I want to find an easier path.
I forget that carrying the cross is not just a part of the Christian life, it is the essence of the Christian life.
When God gives me a chance to bear the cross, I want to remember that I am merely sharing in the fellowship of his sufferings. It is actually giving me a greater opportunity for gaining life. Perhaps without suffering, I would miss the chance of knowing him and the power of his resurrection.
In God’s view of life, contradictory to the suburban view of life, sacrifice is not a bad thing after all.
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. – Phil 3:10