The Last Laugh

Why is it that every time I think I start to understand something, I end up more confused than ever? Is everything in life going to have that extra facet, just around the corner, that stumps me and sends me right back to the beginning? I mean, really, what's the deal? God, couldn't you make anything simple enough for me to understand? But then again...I suppose if I really understood things, I'd take them for granted, and then eventually I would have more losses...but I take things for granted anyway; my friends, my family, church...I even take God for granted. It's so very hard knowing that I am the heart of every problem I have. God has never been the source of my problems; it's always been me trying to excuse my behavior, my thoughts, my inclinations.

Fortunately, He's always there to help me back on my feet, after I cripple myself. Honestly, the human race is so self-destructive...before we can ever get ahead, we hamstring ourselves with our ideals and fancies, when God has a simple, relatively "easy" plan to follow. All He asks is that we cast everything aside and follow Him, and only Him, with nothing between us, or any such. It strikes me that it really should be easy. In fact, it's laughably easy - at least, until I try to do it. But then, in come all the places where I've compromised myself, all the things that I've put higher on my priority list than God...it's a painful realization, that I have so very many things that I "love" more than my Savior.

And yet it's so hard to give them up. Sometimes I feel as if the only way I could ever truly give everything up for Him is if I was at the point of Death, and understanding the regrets I had never understood before, and He brought me back. It seems as if my impossibly hard heart would need a radical change like that. Otherwise, it's too easy to slip back into every habit, every pattern of living I had hoped would have been left behind.

Truly, the only thing between God and myself is, indeed, myself. To die to oneself...it's a hard thing, but necessary. To give up everything and follow Him, daily taking up my cross...I know that the only way that will happen is if God gives me grace to do so. It'll be a choice I have to make eventually.

Either way, God will have the last laugh.

I can only hope I'll be laughing with him.

~Fumble