Following Jesus Is Costly and the Very Best Thing We Can Do
Jesus is blazingly honest about the cost of following him. We can no longer follow ourselves, or be driven by our prideful or self-indulgent desires. We submit our wills to a greater, phenomenally brilliant will, and accept His assignments for our day, and our life.
His assignments, “the cross”, so to say, involve the discipline necessary for growth, rather than neurosis, in Carl Jung’s phrase. It’s the discipline necessary to maintain our health and an orderly household, and develop our gifts and fulfil our calling.
Following Jesus is, of course, not incompatible with goals or ambitions, but it does involve surrendering them to Him. We no longer own our work; God does! And the pursuit of what Tim Keller calls counterfeit Gods: “money, the seduction of success, the power and the glory,” merely exhausts us for nothing. That particular ladder has no end, and our restlessness remains, until as Augustine of Hippo rightly wrote, our heart finds its rest in God.
Besides, as C. S. Lewis points out, the rewards of following Christ are staggering, despite the call to the cross--peace that the world does not give; the fullness of joy; living water to quench our restlessness, living bread for inner life, light for our confusions. And occasional guidance to the one fish which has a silver coin in its mouth, and occasional thousand-fold multiplication of the fruits of our labours. Following Jesus is tough, but worth it, a thousand times over!!
My memoir: Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India UK USA
Blog: anitamathias.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anitamathiaswriter/
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My book of essays: Wandering Between Two Worlds (US) and UK
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