The Easy Life

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” - Joshua 1:9

When you look at the expanse of human history, our lives are easier now than they’ve ever been. We have everything we want at our fingertips. No longer having to deal with the pressures and scarcities of our ancestors, whether we feel like it or not, our lives are easy. And as technology improves, they only become easier.

With all of this, our lives are conditioned towards safety and ease. For the most part, we don’t live as hunter gatherers once did, worried about where the next meal is going to come from or being attacked by some predator in our sleep. We spend more time than ever before sitting in perfectly temperature controlled environments (which for me is a nice balmy 83 degrees). Most of our food sources are packaged, highly processed, hyper palatable concoctions we grab in a hurry. Most of us have more clothing than we could possibly ever need (I’m calling out my sneaker collection here).

You would think with all the basics taken care of: food, shelter, and clothing, we would be a bit more adventurous in other areas of life, but we’re not. We’ve resigned ourselves to sedentary lifestyles and the wormholes of our phones and Netflix. Even the work we choose to do is a direct product of the need for safety and ease. Too many of us picked careers because of what they pay and the comforts they can bring (I had no business majoring in or working in finance). 

Something More?

What if God is calling us to something more? Modern society has made us creatures of comfort and while the merits of such a lifestyle can be debated, it’s not all bad. The problem is we’ve become so inclined towards the easy thing that we no longer have stomachs for anything hard. And when we want everything to be easy then anything that requires the slightest effort is too hard. It can be something as benign as going to the gym or learning how to cook all the way to something pivotal, like taking measurable steps to improve your life. 

Naturally, our wants of desire and ease finds its way into our faith. We don’t take the time to read Scripture because it’s too hard. We don’t share our faith with family and friends because it’s too hard. We don’t pursue a deeper relationship with God because it’s too hard. But those are the easy things.

How many of us are missing out on God’s call on our lives because it’s just too hard? The pursuit of safety and ease means we will ignore the inkling to downsize our homes or switch careers. Because leaving everything we’ve known is hard, we won’t move away even though we feel a strong pull of the Spirit. 

And the hardest one: we can’t commit to where God has us whether it be singleness, poverty, a job we hate, or (insert your struggle here) because we can’t accept that this is our lives. So we spend our days trying to claw our way out of the hardship because the easy thing would be better. 

A few years ago I was asked a question that lives rent free in my head: can you be faithful where you are?

In all of the messiness and hardness of life. In all of the things we don’t want to do and be, can we be faithful in it?

Faithfulness Is Hard

Faithfulness requires us to do the hard thing. It requires us to continue forward when there is no end in sight. It requires us to do the thing that makes us look crazy to the rest of the world but we know is exactly what God has commanded of us (read the first few chapters of Ezekiel for a great example of this). 

In the end, this is a question about faithfulness. Can we be faithful in the hard parts of life? God is not asking us to muster some sort of spiritual grit and power ourselves through the hard day, he is telling us to trust him. Jesus’ words in Luke 12:22-26 are comforting here:

“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: they do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or bar; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? 

If we believe Jesus like we say we do, then we will read these words and maybe just maybe be willing to drop a few of those comforts, chase a little less “easy” in life, and see where God takes us.