Spiritual Life is Hard

It can be easy for us to perceive spiritual life as soft and fluffy, all sunshine and butterflies.

We understand physical life depends on getting exercise. We know that financial life is based in earning and saving. We even have ways to measure our emotional lives, to test our EQ. Spiritual life seems different.

When we consider our spiritual life, we often think in terms of peace or contentment. We may see spiritual life as being about satisfaction or detachment. Some of us believe spiritual life is an exchange; we behave in a certain way, and we are blessed.

We learn or act or believe enough, and our spiritual life is healthy.

Spiritual life is much harder, and more personal, than that.

Spiritual life is rough. It has sharp edges. There are things embedded in spiritual life that bring us to tears.

Spiritual life is a rock we cannot lift or move out of the way. We cannot avoid spiritual life by going around, or over, or through it. It is much bigger than we are.

Spiritual life shows us where we are broken, where we can be restored.

Spiritual life is stronger than we are, harder than we are. It can hold all of us, and all the people around us.

We do not manage spiritual life by exercising, eating right, or watching our spending. Spiritual life is not manageable.

Life keeps breaking out of the boxes we have built so carefully to contain and direct it. Spiritual life is outside our control.

Spiritual life does not necessarily make us feel better by being warm and comforting.

Spiritual life draws us to where we are ready to listen, to wait, to be open to possibilities we have never considered.

How hard is your spiritual life today?

Where is spiritual life breaking through your expectations?

[Image by SixRevisions]