Threats of an easy life
The light rain had smoothened the ground, taking away the rough edges. My friend Nelson from Sierra Leone was in a hurry to join us for a conference devotion.
Stepping on the smooth surface to avoid the muddy puddle, he slipped and fell.
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The Akans have a proverb that describes such a fall— “If you fear the mud, you will wear its clothes!” My friend feared the muddiness and tried to avoid the discomfort, but he fell down and got smeared all over, figuratively wearing its clothes!
When the ground was hard and rough, friction was high, steadying him; but when he chose the smooth places where friction was low, he lost his balance and came tumbling down.
Yet, we love the comfort zones of life—the less strenuous; forgetting that hard work may be energy-draining but it produces enviable results.
Hard times are unwelcome and we do everything to avoid them but they toughen us for harder times ahead.
A Ghanaian maxim says that ‘good living begets forgetfulness.’ We forget because living good often deprives us of wisdom and the need to be careful. That is why a penny is wise and a pound is foolish.
Take something as conventional as pay-day for example. The extra cash in the pocket on pay-day makes careless people spend recklessly, forgetting that soon the pocket will dry up and the cycle of scarcity will resurface by mid-month.
Here is my point: easy living, wanting the comfortable and avoiding the strain, may seem desirable and welcome, but that easy life can produce a negative result. Here is a befitting example:
The objective for students undertaking research is for them to learn through the process.
Thinking through the relevant thesis topic based on a hypothesis, undertaking the literature review, developing the research instrument (or questionnaire), collecting data, feeding the data into a software for analyses, examining the results and findings and drawing up conclusions are all a learning process.
By the time students are done with their thesis, they would have gained knowledge and some experience in their chosen fields, but what do we have these days?
Instead of subjecting themselves to the hard work of research, some students hire and pay others—in kind and in cash—to write their thesis for them. They want the degree but not the hard work.
Here is another example:
At the Nairobi Game Park in Kenya, I observed that the lions in their enclosed den moved about lazily.
Restricted and spoon-fed, they looked flabby and dull. Even when the guard hurled chunks of meat to them so that we tourists would see them in action, they still paced sluggishly towards their lunch.
Later, from the safety of a jeep, we watched lions in their natural habitat stalking antelopes for their food. These lions in the wild looked stronger, trim, alert, and active—and more exciting to watch. The hardship they put up with to secure their meals had strengthened them.
Some young people (even older ones too), desiring the easy life are disposed to corrupt practices, fraud, occultism and lifestyles that land many in serious trouble.
Feeder roads are rough and bumpy, so we want the minister for roads and highways to quickly asphalt our roads but have you noticed that fatal accidents hardly happen on rough roads? If your life is easy, consider it as an asphalted road and live as carefully as you will drive on a smooth highway.
Discipline, which is a hallmark of successful living, is strenuous, but as Hebrews 12:11 stresses: “For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”
God certainly could have provided an easy life for the travelling nation of Israel but he chose for them to go through hardship in order to prepare them for the rough life ahead of them in the Promised Land.
To admit that hardship is good is easier to express than to experience! Who welcomes aches and pains, adversity and trouble?
Certainly, a trouble-free life will be comfortable and enviable but that life has hidden weaknesses.
That is why the apostle James counsels us to “Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance (James 1:2, 3).
It is like exercising, which many of us dread but which is proven to be beneficial to the functioning of the body.
When we face hardships and temptations, or when aches, pains and adversity surround us, we can rely on God who promises to help us deal with them while avoiding the threats of the easy life.
The writer is a publisher, author, writer-trainer and CEO of Step Publishers. E-mail: [email protected]