my journey – part 17

Struggle
is an ugly word.

I wonder why we avoid it so much.

We seek the easy path.
We pray for God to remove obstacles
We see every hindrance as something what annoys us, a true inconvenience on our path to heaven.

Could it be

that all of those annoyances and frustrations
are the only way we step closer to God?

That the easy path,
the one that looks to be fair and lovely,
actually hurts more in the end.

In struggle we must rely on God,
depend on Him as if He was our very Life.

And He is our very life.
And He must remain our very life.

Something interesting to me is that we try to avoid struggle at all cost – this in spite of the fact that the struggles we have in life often define us. God’s plan has always been to lead his people through the wilderness – a time where they are forced to rely on him and cast off the assumptions of their previous lives in order to enter the promised land.

When we, as people, refuse to enter the desert, we don’t take those steps toward God that are so needed. I feel that in many ways, I am on a constant journey from one wilderness to the next.

My prayer is that we each would seek the wilderness in our lives, and that when we do, we would view it as a time of refinement, a time of questioning, and a time of growing closer to God.