What Do you Do?

Will and I are often asked this question. "Well, what do you do?!" and though I don't usually say it I always think to myself "What can I do?" and I really mean it! When God causes certain things to happen when I make choices that follow the gospel what can I do, but bear up under the cost of that choice! I don't do anything. I try hard to trust and I pray and I often beg for relief, but I cannot do anything! And sometimes not being able to do anything is really one of the hardest things for me to do. Bearing up under the pressure of the cost, realizing how weak and frail I really am, how depraved my human self is in reality, and how much I really do want to DO something! But often, there isn't much to do save hope and wait and trust. Faith in effect has become a part of your life when you are bearing. His yoke is light, but the world would love to make you believe otherwise and even though it is light it is costly! I know this because my life is a testimony to the costliness of His grace! But the next time you think someone or you yourself needs to do something.....maybe you are not really looking at things the right way....maybe He is doing something and calling you to witness His majesty?! Maybe He is growing and sanctifying you and changing you into the image of Christ. Bearing isn't bad, it is another testament that Christ lives in you and you are known by Him. Christ bore and if we are called to be like Him we too must bear up under the trails and side-effects of living in this fallen world!

and a post script from my favorite theologian:

Today we in the church know far too little about the unique blessing of enduring and bearing--to bear, not to cast off, to bear, but neither to collapse, to bear as Christ bore the cross, to endure beneth it, and there, underneath, to find Christ. When God imposes a burden, those who are patient bend their heads and believe it is good to be humbled thus--to endure beneath this burden. But to endure beneath it! To remain firm, to remain strong as well--that is what the word means, not anemic, giving in, shrinking back, enamored of suffering--but rather to gain strength under the burden as under God's grace, to preserve God's peace with unshakable constancy. God's peace is found among the patient.



-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Treasures of Suffering p. 43