Running the Cycles of Discomfort

There is an extremely important conclusion to be drawn from the observation that our lives consist of innumerable courses--large and small, long and short--through the roused-readied-reaped cycle: life is a tale of never-ending discomfiture.  We die, in the sense of what really makes us human, knowing nothing more than we did when we were born.  The newborn who squirms toward a mother's comfort is reaching for that which our basal selves seek all our lives; the little child who learns the importance of being nice knows all that matters in life.  Adulthood, on the other hand, consists largely of learning perverse lessons supposedly about how life should be.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the notion that a successful life consists of balance and smooth, graceful handling of life's stages, changes, and rhythms.  That is not the way of Jesus, or of life as it exists to be observed.  For ourselves as individuals, successful life consists of unpredictable and jarring cycles of recognizing challenges, of developing experience with those challenges--large or small, long or short--and of exhausting ourselves against those challenges; roused, readied, and reaped.

The Son of Man has no place to lay his head, says Jesus, and the prevailing modern versions of "the Christian Life" devote themselves to responsible home ownership.  Are Jesus' words metaphorical?  Of course they are--Jesus means them to apply not only to us forsaking the material security of our households, but all other sources of material (and psychological) security as well.  Do not worry about tomorrow, Jesus says--because today is filled with enough challenges to the effect that we must do right even if it causes us to be tortured to death; that is the comfort of Jesus, and anyone who unflinchingly embraces the Gospel knows this.

Even the soft torture of everyday life is not to be escaped.  Is hunger to be satisfied?  Are gentle rhythms to be sought in life?  Of course they are--for other people than our individual selves.  Such is the vision of the dutiful servant that Jesus propagates: a person who sees to it that the household is typified by sleep and work and leisure--for everyone else.  The dutiful servant never really sleeps or rests.

The follower of Jesus, the person who tries to emulate Jesus and is often miserable in the process, has no predictable comfort in life other than to be a miserable follower of Jesus.  When we are caressed momentarily by those unexpected, rare moments of true, wholesome comfort emanating from others, it is because--perhaps only in a place, perhaps only in a moment--those persons are following Jesus.