Being Uncomfortable

God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.

~Ruby Dee

I have been writing this blog for almost 6 years sending it out via email. The hardest thing I have ever done was deciding after a few years to post it on FaceBook as well, not only to my FB friends (including members of my family) but also to the public. If I could have exempted my family from the FB postings, I would have. The thought of those nearest and dearest to me actually finding out who I was and what I thought was scary. I would no longer be seen as someone in a specific role because I would be expressing thoughts and ideas that didn’t fit that role. It was a very scary thing to contemplate. However the other side of the coin was that I felt I uncomfortable in excluding the very people I was fondest of from an opportunity to find out what I really thought. Strange how the public at large didn’t bother me......

You may have had a similar experience where you found that not doing something made you so uncomfortable that doing it gave you a sense of relief... as if all was right with the world once again. In my case it has turned out to be an OK decision but it easily could have gone the other way. I was reminded of the experience of Jesus, chronicled in Luke 4:28-30, where the townspeople from Nazareth who had known him all his life were so enraged by his words in the Synagogue that they attempted to throw him off a cliff. But in order to be true to who he was and what he saw as his mission, he needed to do what he did even if it provoked anger on the part of his friends. He made himself vulnerable, as we are called to do.

Until I read the quote by Ruby Dee this past week, I never really understood just why I had felt driven to make that decision back then. I just know that having struggled with making the decision, I have never regretted it.

It is too bad that in the church we so often take the easy way out, by being afraid to take the risks inherent in challenging long-held beliefs and customs, to move ahead with new ideas that incorporate the knowledge of today with the wisdom of yesterday. But if it makes us uncomfortable enough, maybe, just maybe, we will try.

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NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

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