Spirituality’s paradox – graduating from the school of brokenness

“You couldn’t heal because you kept pretending you weren’t hurt,” was the premise of the last article.

What are the reasons people avoid the healing journey?  Sometimes it’s because their environment isn’t conducive; they don’t have ready support.  Sometimes it seems the ease of denial is more palatable than the intense discomfort of learning a new thing.  And, of course, there’s a lot of trust required in saying bye-bye to one way of living in faith that another way of living that hasn’t come yet will indeed come to fruition.

To heal is to risk.  It’s to take a hard, less-travelled road; a path that so very few take.

Here’s where the one presented with the opportunity to heal approaches an absolute paradox:

Go the hard-easy way or go the easy-hard way.

There is no other option;
no other choice is presented.

“God has a university.  It’s a small school.
Few enrol; even fewer graduate.
Very, very few indeed.”
—Gene Edwards, The Tale of Three Kings

If anyone is to enrol and graduate, may it be you!

THE EASY-HARD WAY – THE WAY MOST GO...

So many people, numbering I’d think in the high 98 percentile, take the easy-hard road.

They delay the discomfort offered to forge a path of healing.  They delay and most inevitably never join that journey that would revive their hope, and indeed would offer them a hope they’ve probably never had.  But the cost is a significant delay in gratification—but that’s the skill you learn in this.

They delay because of the many forces that seem to be or are against them.  They may have little or no support.  They may feel they don’t have either the energy or the time.  But it is still possible because God makes the impossible possible when we have faith.

It’s the easy-hard way because it’s easier initially, but it’s tragically hard in the medium and longer term.  The easy-hard way is the waste of a plethora of opportunities to repent and turn to a healing anyone can have.

THE HARD-EASY WAY – THE WAY FEW GO...

Going the hard-easy way inevitably requires an immense amount of courage and humility, each day, one day at a time, sustained throughout the journey.

Perfection isn’t required, for there will be many days throughout the process where overwhelming fatigue and despair will dominate.  Neither fatigue nor despair ought however have the final say.

The main thing is having faith enough to trust that tomorrow might be better.

The hard-easy way does what is hard now in faith that what is easier lies ahead.  Just the confidence alone for having done the right thing is often enough.  The thought that against the odds we’ve done an inspiring thing.

And once such a victory is won, that victory over self to a life that can be overcome in Jesus’ strength alone is ours.  It can never be taken from us.

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To be honest, the hard-easy way is never truly easy, but the life lived on the other side of the delayed gratification of sacrifice is spiritual victory; an incredibly surreal easiness best described as P-E-A-C-E.

Spiritual victory is something that everyone should experience, for once you’ve been to such a personal mountaintop, few turn back to mediocrity.  And the incredible thing about spiritual victory is the poorer of spirit we are, the more spiritual victory we stand to experience.

If this doesn’t make sense to us, and on face value it won’t, we haven’t experienced the truer spirituality available in brokenness.  Again, so few do.

Many, many Christians with platforms have either never experienced brokenness or (as is the case for many of us) haven’t sustained such a life—because life’s become too easy.

To heal or not to heal; this is life’s perennial spiritual question for all of us to answer.

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Graduating from the school of brokenness comes at the end of a hard-easy journey.  When there’s nothing left to prove to anyone and nothing more to gain than simply being, we’ve come to a place where truly nothing can defeat us—that’s the kingdom of heaven.