Hard Is What Makes It Great

In our free store conversation on Tuesday morning we looked at the story about Jesus being tempted by the devil in the desert.  We focused on that part of the story where the devil takes him to a high mountain and shows him all the glory of the kingdoms of the world in a brief panoramic vision.  Shay shared with us how she had just had a dream the night before in which she was warned not to go to a certain place.  We talked a bit about how dreams and visions are similar and can have importance in our lives but there is no exact science in interpreting them.

This launched us into a discussion about places we would like to see if we had the chance.  George said he would like to go to Africa and see all the wild animals and maybe even Mighty Joe Young which gave us a good laugh.  Our friend Shay said she would like to go to Egypt and see the pyramids.  Rick said that he would love to travel to Germany.  When asked why he said there was no particular reason but some of us suspected it was because of the beer.   Christy and her fiance, who had spent the night in a small pup tent in the woods during the severe wind storm, said they would like to go to Hawaii or a tropical island in Mexico, anywhere sunny and balmy.  We all agreed that our world was a beautiful and amazing place in spite of all the bad stuff in it.

We talked about how Jesus in the desert was being offered all the glory and power in our world in exchange for an easy act of worship.  Someone suggested that it was a story about being offered something the easy way rather than doing things the right way which is often the hard way.  We talked about that classic picture of the good angel on one shoulder and bad angel on the other pulling us in two different directions.

Someone said that it was the desire to make money the easy way that made people like Donald Trump a rich man which made us smile.  One of our friends recounted a scene from the movie "A League of Their Own" in which the women's baseball team's star player quits before the last game because "it's too hard" and the coach says to her, "If it was easy everybody would do it.  Hard is what makes it great."

We talked about how doing things the easy way is not always the best way and someone said that short cuts can turn out to be nothing more than dead ends.  We talked about how many of the best things in life are also hard things.  Exercise is hard but the rewards are very satisfying.  George said that it was hard working on the GED but he is determined to do it because he knows it will be worth the effort. Many of our friends seemed very reflective as we talked about these things.

As our conversation moved toward a conclusion a new friend that had joined us for the first time said that she felt like the discussion was just for her.  She talked about wanting things in her life to come together quickly and easily and that she was realizing that was not going to happen.  We thanked our new friend for sharing.

We have so many friends that inspire us with their fath and hope in the face of serious adversity.  We found it very encouraging to think that the hard things in our lives can make us great.