But honestly...

But honestly I want to be like the Christ who turned water into wine, not the Christ who thirsted on a cross. I want to be the clothed Christ, not the one whose garment was stripped and gambled away. I want to be the Christ who fed the five thousand, not the one who hungered for forty days in the wilderness... This is the dark side of Christianity, the side we don't see when we sign up. That if we want to be like Christ, we have to embrace both sides of His life. What else could it mean when the Bible talks about "the fellowship of His suffering"? How could we enter that fellowship apart from suffering? How could we truly know the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief if we had not ourselves known grief and sorrow?1

Suffering. Grief. Sorrow.

You can't have the good without the bad. You can't have the easy and not the hard. You can't want the end reward without enduring the entire race.

The path to knowing God is a hard road to walk...

Are you willing to presevere to the very end?

Are you willing to embrace all of Christ?

Am I?

1. Ken Gire, The Reflective Life (Colorado Springs, CO: Chariot Victor Publishing, 1998)