The nonsensical ponderings of Eric Frisch...

Comfort is something that we really strive for these days.  We hear about "comfortable living," "comfort foods" and "creature comforts."  We like to be comfortable in our clothes, our homes, our cars, our jobs, our relationships, and just about everything else there is out there.

I've been struggling a little bit lately with this, because I don't think we were really meant to be this comfortable.  If you look at the Bible, there were dozens of times when God pulled people way out of their comfort zones:

-Noah was asked to build an ark in the middle of the desert and then fill it with animals.
-Abraham was told to pack up his family and leave home for a foreign land in old age.
-Moses was instructed to lead an entire nation of people out of slavery.
-Mary was told she was pregnant while still a virgin (major issue in that time and culture)
-The apostles were asked to sacrifice all semblance of a normal life (and in many cases, life itself) to follow a man they had never heard of.
-God's own Son was asked to die on a cross for something He didn't do.

There are a couple similarities across all of these stories if you ask me.  God pushed someone a little bit, took them out of their comfort zone.  This almost always drew some kind of ridicule or torment from other people (something that most of us don't deal with very well - some of them didn't either).  But here's the kicker - those who obeyed God, even in those boundary-stretching times, were rewarded greatly:

-Noah and his family were the only people to survive the flood.
-Abraham was blessed with an enormous family.
-Moses was successful in his trek and became one of Israel's great leaders.
-Mary gave birth to the Son of God.
-The apostles were able to do incredible things in Jesus' name, founding a movement that continues today.
-Jesus' sacrifice changed the course of human history completely.

Given all of this, I have a hard time believing that our upper-middle class, American dream lives are really all they're cracked up to be.  I absolutely believe that God is still stretching people, sending them out on new journeys, and making them very uncomfortable at times.  I've come to realize that getting used to being comfortable probably isn't the best idea, because God typically doesn't let us stay that way very long.  I wonder when we here in America will realize that...