The Struggle

I was listening to AirOne today and Tenth Avenue North was promoting their new album, The Struggle. One of the members was talking about the meaning behind the title and basically said everything isn’t all-of-a-sudden perfect when you believe in the Son of God. It’s not supposed to be. We are supposed to struggle with God.

I’m always amazed when I hear or read things that allude to ‘Christians’ as being simple-minded, afraid to ask the hard questions, desiring to live in a world with the happy ending of a fluffy clouded heaven, or, let’s be honest, idiots without the common sense to know the whole Jesus thing is a load of crap meant to pacify the masses. All you have to do is think about it for a minute and the whole thing is obvious nonsense.

I laugh.

And remind myself … you don’t know, you don’t know, what you don’t know.

Us followers of Christ may be guilty of a lot of things but taking the easy way isn’t one of them. Faith and belief in a God so much bigger than your, or my, mortal mind can ever hope to wrap itself around is much more difficult than believing in nothing … or everything. I speak from experience. The one constant in my faith walk has been The Struggle.

I resist the idea of a God powerful enough to show and teach me things beyond this world, yet posses an unquenchable longing to know more.

I shy away from a love so great I can never be enough to earn it, yet bask in the glory of such grace.

I want to run and hide from a God who overwhelms with the softest of whispers and faintest of touches, yet long with a desperate heart to always be found.

I often find myself with a face turned away saying, ‘OK! I can’t take anymore! This is too sharp!’ I fall down.

And the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of Elijah, the God of David, the God that watched His only Son suffer the unimaginable simply to make it possible to be near to me, is the same God forever reaching down to gently pick me back up. I am reminded. I am rejuvenated. I am renewed. I am ready to begin The Struggle again.