simple yet difficult

I'd apologize for the lack of posting, but unfortunately I have no excuse save the lack of new ideas and new progress on the various things going on in my life. On the book front however, I have finally gotten around to reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell -- suffice it to say, it is an awesome book. I am consistently amazed at what I perceive as God's influence in shaping the appropriate times in my life for me to stumble upon information that directly impacts things I am thinking about or experiencing. And as you might have surmised, Velvet Elvis was a book filled with ideas and concepts and stories that directly related to a lot of stuff going on with me or around me lately.

I think that if I were to take all of the information that I have absorbed from various books, including another perspective as added by Rob Bell, I could boil down my current insight to the following statement.

Being a Christian - following the way of life that Jesus taught - can be, more often than not, a difficult life... but it is very simple.

I know, I know... that sounds so contradictory and confusing, but let me give a quick illustration from my Christmas holiday. We gave my aunt and my mom a small puzzle, it consists of 9 squares that you must arrange into a 3x3 grid. The puzzle when completed will look like a Pennsylvania Dutch quilting pattern. Each square forms a portion of the pattern, and in order to connect to squares into the 3x3 grid that reveals the pattern, you need to match up some pictures. The squares' four sides have each have 1 of 8 images: the bottom or top of a blue "tulip", the bottom or top of a blue "rose", the bottom or top of a red heart flower, the bottom or top of a red "rose". There is only one solution to the puzzle. The concept is extremely simple, arrange the squares in a 3x3 grid so that the sides of the squares that touch form a complete flower (matched tops and bottoms). Would you guess that even after having 2 medical professionals, an engineer and computer scientist, a teacher, an environmental manager, and 2 quilters all try separately and teamed together in various combinations, we still haven't been able to solve that stupid puzzle! The game is simple, solving it is difficult. There are many combinations that nearly solve it and come up short by one square; also, there are times where you think you've gotten it licked, only to realize that you mismatched one element by mistake. However, there is an upside to this simple yet difficult puzzle -- we spent time together, we laughed, we talked while we played with it, we helped each other, we pointed out mistakes each other's mistakes when we noticed them to save future frustration. In short, no one got it perfect, but by simply knowing the guiding principles and giving it our best shot, we had some fun together.

The way of life that Jesus taught is an extremely simple life, but actually living it out everyday can be extremely difficult. Love your neighbor. How much more simple can it get? It's a profound statement with wide ranging implications, and yet we screw it up all the time. Certainly, we could ask what has already been asked; who is my neighbor? But there are even more complex situations that make that principle difficult to live out. I know my neighbor includes everyone that I come into contact with throughout my life, but how could I possibly love someone who wrongs me deeply? Say a loved one was killed by a repeat drunk driver; could you suppress your grief, anger, rage, loneliness, and utter sense of loss and love that neighbor? What if you were the victim of identity theft which then resulted in your house being foreclosed on, car repossessed, and required you to file bankruptcy before they caught the person responsible; could you love that neighbor?

Such a simple way of life, and yet so difficult to live it....