The truth is hard to hear, understand, imagine, and believe……

The Bible requires one to stop, think, focus, and ponder. It is extremely hard to focus on these words. It is hard and uncomfortable. It is heavy, no doubt.

It is easy to think about our own view of the world, our created thoughts on religion, God, joy, happiness, and love. These thoughts are very comfortable. We can swim here for hours. It is easy to think aimlessly about material possessions (house, boat, money) or, say, vacations (the memories, the future trip to the beach) or your own personal happiness (relationships, my business). It is easy to click on Zillow and look around. Even easier to hop on social media and check out the world, your friends, the pictures of life. When your mind escapes to these things, thirty minutes have passed by at the snap of a finger.

It is extremely hard to focus the mind on scripture, to walk through the deep truths of Jesus, the implications of what he said, the implications of his life. These words, these thoughts cause uncomfortableness. Not rules and regulations, mind you, but deep truths. Rules and regulations are not what his life was about at all, but this may be the very thing that keeps most away. If you spend time in his words, in his life, everything changes. It must. You are forced to deal with thoughts and beliefs that are extremely uncomfortable.

It is easy to go back to aimless thinking about the things of the world. We put aside the deeper stuff for another day, while the very ones we would die for (family, friends, kids) follow our lead, as they, too, put hard truths aside until later. We cause the very ones that we would die for to look to the world for happiness or joy because of our lack of discipline or desire to swim in the uncomfortable truths of scripture. After all, if we dealt with these truths, surely we would want the very ones we love the most to know.

I desire to care enough about those around me to dig into the deep, hard truths on their behalf. I desire to go through uncomfortable thinking and the reading of the words of the Bible so that I can impact the very ones that I would die for. I desire to point them to joy that the world can’t offer in social media, in sports, in school, in material possessions, in anything on earth.

That is my desire. I fail often. So, grace is the hard truth of the Bible, possibly the hardest to understand, that I cling to each day.

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