Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

What was the last challenge you took God up on?

Maybe it was to serving in a new way. Maybe it was opening the Bible again after a long time away from it. Maybe it was making a call, an apology, or a meal for someone. Maybe it was giving someone a ride or a break. Maybe it was opening your home or your heart or your wallet.

There are lots of ways God prompts and challenges us. We live in a culture of ease though — it’s a culture in which we work as hard as we can to iron out challenges that don’t come on our own terms. It’s fast food, next day delivery, movies on demand, and so much more. We’ve built an entire economy and way of life predicated on the notion that we can, with enough money or hard work, erase challenge.

Of course, we will take on challenges on our own terms. We will pay to go to the gym or run a marathon. We will decide to go on a hike or to climb a mountain. We will do extraordinary things because they say something about us and our achievement to others.

God gives us challenges that are less spectacular than the ones we are willing to pay for though. He gives us challenges that say something about who he is because they call us out of ourselves and into deeper relationship with him and with the people and community around us. Our culture of ease tempts us not just to ignore challenges but to treat them as an aberration or as a chance for self-adulation.

But the challenges in our lives that we embrace for the sake of others, for that which is bigger than ourselves, are what shape us and make us who we are. Embracing challenge is what will make us continue to grow. I’m looking for small challenges this week — I’m staying open to how God might be calling me to grow. Our soul needs regular exercise to grow into the full measure and stature of Christ. May we all find some new challenge this week that we can take God up on.

Christian life is less about some revolutionary change than it is about evolutionary development — that evolution will be the process of saying yes to God again and again as he nudges us toward holiness, one small challenge at a time.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert