DOING WHAT COMES UNNATURALLY

An item from my email bag. "If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills; if you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains; if you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles; if you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it; if you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time; if you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong; if you can take criticism and blame without resentment; if you can face the world without lies and deceit; if you can conquer tension without medical help; if you can relax without liquor; if you can sleep without the aid of drugs, THEN YOU ARE PROBABLY THE FAMILY DOG.

           

Isn't that the truth! Would that we all be more like the family dog. If we were or could be, then life as we know it would be so much easier for us and everyone else for that matter.  

Another truth is that as much as we may want to be like animals, or at least have the disposition of animals (especially dogs!), we all probably have a long way to go. For whatever reason it is, we are often disposed to be indisposed, especially to those who are always whining or complaining or who bore us almost to death. We find ways to avoid those who don't have time for us or who blame us for their problems. The list is endless of those people we naturally want to avoid. 

           

It is also natural to avoid pain and suffering, to run away from it as fast as we can, especially the suffering of others. It is even more natural to avoid any action that will cause us personal pain and suffering. It is not natural to turn the other cheek, to walk that extra mile, to love the person who is deliberately hurting us. It sometimes takes every fiber of our being to do any one of these actions that seem so foolish. But as Christians we are called to do what comes unnaturally.

           

That is not easy nor is it meant to be easy. Sometimes it takes great will power to do what we know in faith we must do. It is an effort of the will because often our heart is simply not in it. But it is more that than. It takes more than that, as we have all discovered whenever we have made that effort to will ourselves to go that extra mile, to do what we really did not want to do.

First of all it takes self-discipline which demands training which is what Lent is all about. Lent is about training ourselves to willingly walk where we would rather not go but where our faith demands we go, to do that which we would rather not do but which our faith demands that we do. Because doing such does not come naturally, we have to learn how to do it. Lent is the time to practice the self-discipline needed to do so.

But no matter how self-disciplined we are, no matter how much we are willing to walk that extra mile or turn that cheek, sometimes it was only in and through the grace of God and only the grace of God that we can take and make those steps. Our natural instinct, again, is to turn and run away. But we must not.  Thus, looking on from the outside, when someone does what comes unnaturally, we can probably assume that that person is probably a Christian.