So Much Easier for Everyone Else

Some of the things I write may come off as cynical or harsh.  For example, in a previous post I mentioned how I am someone who cheats on his wife and works so much that he pushes his kids away and I don't even have a wife or kids.  

I don't write these things to be facetious or to overstate my point, but to illustrate how deep our sin, my sin, actually goes.  The actual manifestation is not what is important, it is the severity of our state that I hope to communicate.

I will try to explain...

I look around at the people around me and I only see a fraction of their life and know even less of the thoughts that go through their heads and hearts, yet I make judgements and come to conclusions about those people.  Their marriages and relationships are so together and wonderful, their jobs are what I really want to be doing, their lives the ones I really want to live. Everything is so much easier for everyone else, but that is only because I am privy to all of my history and all my thoughts, so I know how hard this life really is.

I don't realize that there are others looking at my life and saying the same things..."man, I wish I was single and free like him," "his job is such a cake walk," "that is the life I want to be living." I am very talented at covering over the things I don't want others to see.  I am a master of misdirection and deception.  I don't even have to try, it just comes naturally.  So we look at one another and think, "I wish I was more like them," because on the surface things are always pleasant and happy and easy.  How else can we idolize and try to immitate the experience of countless celebrities who are in rehab, in their fourth marriage, and have kids with names like Apple?  The further from actual contact with real people we are, the easier it is.  It is the story of my life, of our lives.

The problem is that we live our lives deep down inside where no one really ever gets down to see.  If they did, they wouldn't stick around very long, would they? That is where we live, that is where the troubles of a difficult life really lie and we want to escape, we want to be free and we are trapped.  

I am, by nature, an object of wrath.  I can cover most of it up, but it is there.  The deep dark cravings of a sinner...but because of his great love for us, for me, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions - it is by grace that we are saved. (Eph 2:4-5) Amen!