So, You Think Life is Hard.

I am in a class this semester called Classic Christian Literature. We are currently reading through Foxe's Book of Martyres. If you ever feel like what you are going through is difficult then pick up this book and make your worries feel small.

I read about a man named Epipodius. He was a solid Christian. He was petitioned by the governor of Lyons in A. D. 177 to join in a pagan feast as an act of "mercy" to spare him from persecution. He said in reply, "your pretended tenderness is actually cruelty; and the agreeable life you describe is replete with everlasting death Christ suffered for us... Your pleasures lead to eternal death, and our pains to perpetual happiness". After making these statements he was stretched on a stretching rack made to pull the bones in your arms, legs, and chest out of joint before being cut with iron hooks and later beheaded.

So, still think your life is hard? It was convicting for me personally. I know I tend to get grumpy and complain when my internet isn't fast enough for my preference or the air conditioner isn't working. How petty have Christians become in recent days? We live in the "prosperity gospel" age. People think that being a Christian will make you successful and have no problems with which to deal. God never promised a life of ease. Quite the opposite in fact. He commands us to lift up our cross and follow after Him. He commands us to enter into His own suffering, quite literally. How many of us would be willing to hoist a heavy cross up a hill after being whipped to the point we don't even look human anymore? That's what Christ did. Why should our lives be easy if Christ's life was hard? Yet he kept a happy spirit. Like Epipodius he could say, "our pains to perpetual happiness." He knew what came after death. Worry wasn't a part of Christ's life, and it shouldn't be a part of ours. Don't expect this life to be flowery beds of ease, but be happy that you can represent Christ in the hard and the easy, the rich and the poor, the sickness and the health, the life and the death. Food for thought.

Keep thinking friends,

Simeon Brazzell

I Tim 1:12