Faith Venture

Easy is hard; hard is easy.

A movie actor weighed more than 550 lbs. (250 kg). He lost about 300 lbs. Much of that new 250 lb. person was packed with lean muscle.

He related that maintaining the lifestyle that resulted in a 550 lb. person was easy. But living at that size was hard.

Working in the gym was hard. But living in the new body was easy.

Living a life oblivious to the spirit is easy. One can just slide along. But life that way can be hard facing up to relationships and decisions.

Spiritual disciplines (similar to going to the gym) can be hard. But life in the spirit with peace, hope, joy, and the rest is easy.

You want to lose weight. You choose a diet. Any one will work.

You want to improve health. You choose a healthy diet and a workout routine. Almost any one will work.

You wish to pursue a spiritual life. You choose to meditate.

Can you do this almost every day for the rest of your life?

Just a few days or weeks will not accomplish the goal. It must become the new you. Every day. For the rest of your life.

I was the school’s geek in high school. Electronics fascinated me.

One day the speech teacher had me pulled from a class to go to his room to plug a microphone into the school’s new oscilloscope so that they could see their voice as a wave form on a graph. Pretty advanced for 1964.

Great idea, except that I was expected to set it up instantaneously in front of the class without prior trial. That didn’t work.

Brilliant ideas are nice. Taking the time before to prepare, try out methods, get things right–those are the work that will make or break execution of the idea.

So, you want to be the local (or regional) Bible teacher. Have you invested the time and effort to study words, context, geography, settings, and so forth?

You want to be a spiritual guru. Have you directed your effort and attention to sitting in meditation daily for weeks, months, years?

Do you have the discipline to prepare?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes in The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, “Upon arriving at the hotel in Dubai, the businessman had a porter carry his luggage; I later saw him lifting free weights in the gym.”

I drove to the Y to work out after exercising in a park. I always parked in a spot at the far corner of the lot. Many people jockeyed to get a parking spot close to the door before going in to use a treadmill or elliptical trainer to walk.

I now walk to the community center of our little community to use the fitness equipment, hardwood floor for Yoga, and the hot tub. Everyone else drives.

It is not that I am better than others. It’s just a mind set.

Do we carry over that mind set to other areas of our lives?

Do we skip the hard part of scholarship before reading a few passages from the Bible and then formulating a theology?

Do we skip the hard part of sitting in prayer and meditation daily while thinking we are becoming spiritually mature with a few “good thoughts”?

I’m reading a book of aphorisms from Nassim Nicholas Taleb called The Bed of Procrustes. (A link for those who need a refresher on the old Greek story of a bandit called Procrustes–the stretcher.)

It is as difficult to avoid bugging others with advice on how to exercise and other health matters as it is to stick to an exercise schedule.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Does this same idea apply to meditation, prayer, repentance?