A Path Made Possible

It's about love today.  Because I've been grappling with the notion.  Wondering if I've known it .  If I've received it outside of God.  Wondering if I've even given it with God.

Because how do we love living after the fall?  Is it possible?  Is it even worth it?

There's happiness and then there's holiness.  But if I choose the later, I better be sure I'm really choosing it.  Not just swallowing pain, martyr-like, in bitter pill form.

Which comes first- the desire to eradicate self-will (only because we've finally recognized it for the destructive path it is) or the desire to be Christ like?

I think some of us want to be like Christ.  Until we realize the sacrifice it takes.  And then we trip.  It is not an easy road, Christ's, even for the believer.  Even the believer can become jaded and stumble.  The flesh can assert, screaming, "That's far enough. I've had it with holiness.  I want happiness."  We can even throw out that dreadful word, 'deserve'.

And for the agnostic?  I don't know.  It's hard enough with faith.

"We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there.  Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly" -AA Chp. 4

The prodigal son came because he was starving.

The first born son seemed not to rejoice.

Are there both in each of us?  Can we come starving, be fed, receive the love and then have to start anew when we trip on the change we see required of us?  Can we fight the urge to demand from others justice? Can we move out of the barren resignation into true love?

We humans fear change. We want an  'easier, softer way' .

It's not easy and it's not soft, this way and yet it's a path made possible by the One.