My One Comfort

I sit in the summer shade listening to geese, half asleep; then in a comfortable overstuffed couch. I eat three meals a day and am blessed with computers and a full time job. Cars transfer me places and buildings house me. Hot water flows easily from the faucet and I would be foolish not to recognize that I live in a life of comfort. I live in a “first” world country. I am rich, though there are days I certainly don’t feel it, and as I settle into a stable life and find myself in a quandary over questions like whether to attend conferences for one or two days I’ve wondered if I am in danger while in comfort.      

                Is comfort a danger?

                After all, no offense to America, but consumerism is a deep in-set part of culture, and worse is a blindness to the difference between selfishness and self-care. I who have seen the dangers of over extension now sit in the danger of the other and I wonder, what is this?

                I have seen suffering. How can you even consider spending money to go to a writer’s conference when there are people starving?

                It is a first world problem: and they are legitimate. Perhaps.

                What if, my dear friends who are blessed with homes and money and clothes on our backs, our problem is not comfort?

                What if we have forgotten the point of Revelation 3? As John so aptly wrote to our brothers and sisters in Laodacea, we must return to our first love. Just as I could be distracted by questions of so many natures in so many places, the issue is not comfort, but our focus.

                There is a promise that all tears will be gone someday.

                Which means that our battle with sin will be over—thank goodness. Wars will have ceased. Natural disaster will be over. World hunger will no longer be an issue and I imagine that climate change will not be a question since, if we read Revelation literally there will be no sun, it’ll just be God’s light.

                But if my eyes stray from my Lord, then I am in danger of cruelty. Then selfishness can seep into my being and laziness my soul. So Lord, let me seek you, my first love. And follow you to the ends of the earth—wherever that might lead. Ultimately in both life and death our comfort is that we are not our own: we've been bought with blood. We are safe, secure, beloved in Christ's Lordship. Father, draw me closer to your everlasting self.