Five Minute Friday :: Hard Love

Five minute writing prompt on:

Hard Love

Go.

Why do people suffer? The good people. The godly people.

I heard recently that to deny our suffering or assume we can escape it somehow, through enough prayer or goodness or avoidance, is to deny the very passion of Christ.

Christ took the cup, not because he wanted the suffering. He did it out of obedience. "Not my will, but yours." After he was brutally beaten beyond our comprehension, he carried his cross then died on it. This was the ultimate act of love. It was through that drinking of the cup and embracing the suffering that life came for all of us.

So, too, we must embrace our suffering and pain. For only through our surrender to the cross, carrying our own cross and dying to our self can we experience true life as God intended. Life to the full.

Think about it. When we try to escape pain, it follows us. When we embrace it, walk through it (the hardest thing we may ever have to do), there is healing. There is joy. There is life again.

I'll admit, I don't want it. But it is a part of this life. Look in the mirror. Look around you. It's there. It's there in the eyes of the person you refuse to look in the eye.

It's a hard life. It's hard to follow Christ's example of the ultimate sacrifice. But, life - love - was never meant to be easy.

Stop.

I need to add a few extra thoughts. Although, this is what I came up with in five minutes, this is a big topic and an important piece to this "Hard Love" is that God provides the way through it. It's He who can in and through us. We don't have to walk through any of this hard life alone. We can't do it on our own. He makes the impossible possible.

Please take a moment and watch this short film by Eric Ludy...the epitome of Hard Love. You WILL be blessed by it!

I'm linking up with the Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Friday. It's your turn!