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At Ease

In these days of a global pandemic and rampant social unrest, it is easy to feel like our world is falling apart.

For me personally, it also seems that my old “normals” have been turned upside down.  Along with that, I’ve been realizing that my preference is often just to be comfortable.  And whatever level of comfort I had before all this just seems to be a vague memory.

I looked up the definition of comfort.  It includes:  “contented well-being, a satisfying or enjoyable experience.”

A similar word to comfort is “ease”.  One aspect of that word is the absence of difficulty.  That, in fact, is how the word is used in the book of Job:  “I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, but trouble comes.”  (Job 3:26).  That missing quietness, that lack of rest, that dread of trouble coming, all contribute to feeling of being not at ease. 

But I’m not sure that being at ease should be my goal or focus in life.  Again, in the book of Job, we find that our desire to be at ease can impact our perspective:  “In the thought of one who is at ease there is contempt for misfortune”…  (Job 12:5).  When we just want to be at ease, we resent it when troubles or difficulties or misfortunes come.  Even more so, we tend to look at those things with contempt. 

It also appears from the book of Job that God may, at times, work to move us away from our clinging to our desire to be at ease:  “I was at ease, and he broke me apart”…  (Job 16:12).  I don’t think this means that God is a cosmic kill joy but it points to the truth that He knows when we’ve allowed our desire to be at ease to become too important to us.

Many of us would probably not normally welcome difficulties, troubles and misfortunes but we know, or at least should know, that they are a part of life.  And not only that, but they are part of what God uses to work in our lives.  In Romans 5:3-4, we find the following:  “Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope.”

While I might desire to be comfortable and at ease, I don’t think God is necessarily supportive of those desires.  On the contrary, it seems that God is more committed to using difficulties, troubles, misfortunes and sufferings to build my character!  And the really good news in that is this character building process somehow produces hope.

 

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