Simple Isn't Necessarily Easy

And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. Mark 9:43

The movie title is simply, “127 Hours”, and premiered at the Telluride Film Festival several weeks ago. It is the story of Aron Ralston’s accident while hiking alone in 2003. His right arm was pinned beneath an 800-pound boulder. His water bottle was empty. A rescue crew was unlikely to spot him in the narrow slit of Utah’s Bluejohn Canyon. So after 5 days of being trapped, Aron Ralston took out his pocketknife and amputated his arm below the elbow. He then rigged anchors into the cliff, fixed a rope and rappelled 60 feet to the canyon floor. Bleeding heavily through a tourniquet, Ralston began to hike. He had walked about five miles when a helicopter search team found him.

When that story first broke, the question that everyone had to ask was, “how could someone do that?” There’s no doubt that Aron Ralston had ‘true grit.” But then we all reformed the question, “Would I have been able to do that?”

When we stand back and analyze the situation objectively, it is not difficult to reach the conclusion that the only way to save his life was to do what he did. That’s the simple part. But the actual execution of that conclusion – well that’s the difficult part.

That’s often the way life is. There are some conclusions in life that are simple to reach: I need to loose weight, I need to repent, I need to forgive, I need to pray more, read my Bible every day, I need to treat my family better, and on the list goes. We know what we need to do. That’s simple. Doing them is another story. It’s not easy to loose weight. It’s not easy to repent and stop doing sinful things. It’s not easy to forgive others when they hurt you. It’s not easy to reprioritize our schedule to make time for prayer and Bible reading. It’s not easy to become the husband, father, wife, mother, etc. that I know I need to be.

There may be many reasons why we find it difficult to change our life. Maybe it’s because we’re just not desperate enough yet. Maybe it’s because we aren’t yet faced with the terrible consequences of our situation that we’re not willing to do the hard work that needs to be done. Think about your life – in all aspects, in your relationship to self, to others, to creation, and to God, where are you stuck? What do you need to do to get free and begin living again? Knowing what to do may be the easy part. Doing it will be hard - but it is only in the doing of the hard work that we can overcome being trapped between a rock and a hard place.

Aron Ralston finally reached a state of desperation that moved him to do something to save his life. He found the strength to do the hard thing. Are you willing to do the hard thing to save your spiritual life? Simple-yes; Easy-no, but worth it.

Father of creation, so often I go off on my own, like Aron Ralston did and find myself in trouble. I know you have the power to rescue me from my own weakness and stupidity, but I also believe you want me to take a step of faith and sever the ties that keep me from fully following you. Give me the strength to make those hard choices and to live for you.