I gotta stop being lazy...

It is becoming increasingly tempting to give up on God.

Haha. No, I'm not dropping my faith. I think, far too often, I have a tendency to cry out only in times of need. When life is good...when I'm strolling through the Zoo or duel-wielding ducks...when I'm inhaling Jr Chickens and talking about life...when I'm writing my PDENG or WTR...life is alright. Life is good. Thus God is good.

When I have too much on my plate, too much on my Todo list...too much people and situations needing my attention...too much emails to write or too tired to crawl out of my bed...my hand is the first to raise up. "God. Cover me"...and often, I'd complain that I can't make this journey. The mountain is too great. Too much obstacles. Too much temptations. Too much unanswered questions. Dang. I'm just human. I can take the easy way out. Surely...God understands. He knows I'm weak like that. He knows I'm lazy and weak and pathetic. He's loving and forgiving. I can fail and give up once in a while, right? Surely...He understands...right?

I'm slowly realizing that...as much as it may be true that in this journey where I'm walking towards Him, that alot of it is gonna have to be Him walking towards me (you try walking towards a photon source when you're a 2 inch black box...=P). Yes yes, there's nothing wrong with asking Him to meet you here. I suppose my error these days has been expecting Him to do all the work. Expect Him to take away all the temptations. Expect Him to grant me motivation. Expect Him to do all the work in me such that I can do His work. My rationale has always been...well. We're called to advance the Kingdom...why doesn't God just make it easy for us to advance the Kingdom?

Because it's not worth as much. Last friday, I was out with some friends. As we chatted, somehow we got on the topic of Final Fantasy X. People who played through that game would know that the "final weapons" are absurdly annoying to get. It's not too atypical to hear that someone spent 6 hours (like I did) running the Chocobos to acquire Tidus' weapon. Or wasted huge amounts of time, dodging lighting at Thunder Planes. Or was crazy enough to play enough Blitzball to get Wakka's last weapon.

It's really the same thing. Yes, Square-Enix could've made it easy for us to get the last weapon. Yuna's last weapon was fairly easy to grab, if I recall correctly. But what of that sense of accomplishment? At the end of the day, whatever I did in my save files for FFX is just 1s and 0s. I'm not any richer or smarter. I'm not any smarter or stronger. But I could say "yup. I got that one". And if a 4-byte number is a great achievement...what about the stuff that's more real?

Once again, discussions came back to those "hardcore" people. I have no concept of what it is like to be complimented by people who've achieved much in that field. Not just spiritual and Christianly people, for there's a bit more than that in this world. Things like the Arts. Sciences. If I was an actor, what would it be like to be complemented by Andrew Lloyd Webber? If I was a physicist, what would it be like to be complemented by Enrico Fermi? or Clark Maxwell? If I was an engineer...(um. I don't know any famous engineers. Do such people even exist? -_- Oliver Heaviside, maybe. Haha). Similarly...I have no concept of what it would be like to be told by God that I was a good and faithful servant. I'm sure it'll be pretty sweet when I'm there. But that's not a good motivation right now. How could it be? It's a situation that I cannot possibly understand. So the rewards for this leg of the race would have to be intrinsic.

I guess that's all the reasons one needs to fight harder against complacency. Enough to fight against a life where things are nothing more than a cornerside prayer, answering questions because I can, all while "praying hard" that God will come and find me somewhere, when I know I have the tools to be a bit more than I am now.

Over the years, it has become easy to forget why we do the things we do. Forgotten what it's like to live the faith. Forgotten to ask where God is. Society's reality checks doesn't align with spiritual ones. Going to need to rediscover what it means to run the race with the end in sight. There really isn't enough time left to procrastinate, and be lazy, and hope that someone else will make things right. If God wanted to, everything would be right, pure and wholesome. But the fact that the people around you are broken and crying out, the fact that things are not perfect and pretty...means we've got work to do. Yes, God can handle all things. But for some reason, he wanted me as part of this equation. No, I don't know why. Maybe I'll ask Him one day, if it's still important to me, one day.

Two years or six, it really isn't that much time, in the face of eternity.