Real life story…I showed up to study hall and from the outside everything seemed great. I smiled, I was struttin my stuff, saying hello to anyone who cared to hear it, making my way through the start of my day. But little did anyone know that beneath my left tennis shoe lied a sock. Not just any well-worn sock, but a half way down the foot sock. You all know that feeling. When one of your socks has slowly drifted from over the heel to mid-sole and it feels as if the world cannot continue until that sock is put back in place! This is called living in the uncomfortable! Below is the real-life evidence from the day of the situation.
Believe it or not this sock relates a lot to life. I was reading Matthew 8 this morning and came over this section:
18When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. 19 Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
20 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
My first thought was…ouch! That doesn’t sound all too great! If I’m gonna follow someone I want to know that there will be a comfy bed to sleep in each night and maybe even a free breakfast buffet included for each morning. I guess that’s not what following Jesus looks like.
As I wrapped my mind around knowing that following Jesus means no guaranteed comfort I realized how comforting that actually is! That reminds me that the ONLY thing I truly need is Him, the One I will be following. So, no extra baggage to drag around that might be keeping me from following Him with everything I am.
As I gear up for graduation and leaving Austin for the next year, I feel a bit uncomfortable. I feel like there are questions about what I’ll be doing and where I’ll be going that I can’t answer right now. And maybe for you too there are things that put you in a place of discomfort. Maybe you don’t have plans for Saturday night, maybe you don’t know what to do after graduation, maybe you don’t know what your purpose is in the world, maybe you have no idea what new hair dew you want, or you don’t know if you want the whipped cream on that latte, or even if you like whipped cream at all. Every day we are faced with discomfort and all of these little discomforts distract us from being free to follow. Following Jesus with everything and leaving it all behind sounds a whole lot simpler than figuring out the solutions to all those problems.
God always knew what was best. He knew that what we needed was a simpler life following Him. One without socks half down my foot. But even if my sock is half down my foot, I would feel more comfortable following Him like that than not following Him at all.
Right now, with all the uncomfortable-ness of graduation and starting a new season of life, God is teaching me that it’s actually so simple. All that is required is a desire to go after Him. A heart abandoned and following Him. That’s it. Not even Saturday plans, or post-graduation plans, or an answer for my purpose, or a vision for a new hair dew, or whipped cream, or socks. Just me! And just you too.
