Every Racer has one. We don’t like to admit it. Sometimes we even judge other racers for theirs. But we all have one. Every single one of us.
A comfort clause. For me, it is Dr. Pepper. I’m not dying out here or anything, but it sure will be nice to get a sip of that good ole delicious acid when we connect through the states next month. For some racers, it is fruit and veggies (which we get “enough” of, but not much), for others it is laundry (we will send out to a store in town rather than hand wash), to others it is a tv show, etc., etc. These are the things we miss the most. The last threads of comfort that we are clinging to.The part of us that would rather not “live simply.” We justify these clauses with a variety of excuses. But, cards on the table, we really just want to be more comfortable.
The truth that I have come to notice, in my own heart and amongst my squad, is that we are still in pursuit of comfort. We left the normal and familiar because we wanted something more, something incredible, something extraordinary. We sacrificed comfort to find more of who God is.
But our dirty little secret is that we are still pursuing comfort. We have not been satisfied by our pasts and have, to some degree, come on this journey to find the comfort our pasts failed to bring us. We left comfort, only to pursue comfort.
This is a grave mistake. We are struggling to accept that it is not only our path that was imperfect, but our pursuit. Indeed, our path is a direct result of our imperfect pursuit. But we foolishly believe that traveling the world, living in Christian community, soaking in all the Race has to offer, will bring us to that place of comfort we have so long been striving for. But it won’t. Life is, and always will be, hard. Our comfort is a mirage in the dessert. It is not real, it is not what we were created for.
I imagine the world as a very deep well. Desperately, we try to climb our way to the top of it. Toward the warmth. It is a slippery journey. It takes all of our attention and ability on ourselves (where our hands and feet go, where we need to reach next, the sweat on our brow), to make even the slightest progress. It makes a lot of worldly sense.
The problem is that the gospel is not about sense. It is not about comfort.
I want to be the kind of disciple that fights to be at the bottom of the well, with those in the deepest and darkest corners of the world. I want to lower myself, for the sake of others, to show love and hope, peace and mercy in the midst of discomfort. I want to be light in darkness. Joy in suffering. I want to be a part of the things that baffle the world, that overcome the world. I long to be the kind of person who does not flee or merely survive discomfort, but thrives in it. I want to be like Jesus, whose defining act (which transformed the universe) was accomplished in extreme discomfort.
My plea to myself, to my team, to my squad and all future racers; to my family, to my friends, to the teenagers I was blessed to serve, is this: pursue discomfort. Don’t just deal with it, rejoice in it. Discomfort grows us, stretches us, pushes back the boundaries of our experience, pushes forward the capacity of our capabilities, breaks down barriers of expectation, overcomes obstacles of experience and knowledge, and puts us into places where only Jesus is. Comfort is a greater enemy to God than poverty. God has called us into apostleship, not as a new path to comfort, but as a call to die to comfort. The surest way to know you are in tune with the will of God is if you are uncomfortable and smiling; anything else gets very difficult to discern.
The only way to discover peace that passes understanding is to be in danger we cannot understand. The only way to find satisfaction is to break free of the patterns of this world. The mystery of the gospel is that the only way to reach the front is push your way to the back. The only way to get out of the well of this world is to give up on yourself (not out of loathing, but out of obedient sacrifice). Buying in to who we really are helps us give up on who are flesh says that we are. And the truth of our identity is that we were made to live outward, to serve others and worship Christ, in ALL circumstances. Comfort is about pressing inward, discomfort pulls us out of ourselves.
If the people of the world, even just the professed Christians, burned their comfort clause, their feelings of entitlement to familiarity and increased ease, then our entire planet would be void of hunger and war. If we would allow ourselves to more readily dwell in discomfort than flea it, our lives and our world would look a lot more like the Kingdom of Heaven.
