This CS Lewis quote has stuck with me since I saw it the other day:
“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
I am suddenly aware that lots of my decisions to pick TV or a snack or a book over prayer probably are not rooted in laziness, or in malice, or in anxiety over whether I will hear from Christ when I sit with him, but in anxiety over what he’s going to tell me when I do.
What project or vocation or choice or change will he invite me toward? What wherewithal will it require that I don’t think I have? How painful is the transition to it going to be, whatever it is?
I wonder if a lot of people who avoid God avoid him not because they are busy or lazy or unbelieving but because they are comfortable — not because they don’t think he is real but because deep down they know he is.
Avoidance is an affirmation of God’s existence, an expression of a belief — acknowledged or not — that spending time with him will result in change.
Which means that spending time with him will result in discomfort.
And we don’t like that.
But Pope Benedict XVI reminds us:
“The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.”
And I think becoming who God created us to be will be worth discomfort.