Excerpt – The Weight Of Life

The following is an excerpt from Thrive Year 1 Quarter 2 Workbook, pg 12.

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The problem with seeing is that it often requires us to see the darker side of life.  We don’t get a pair of glasses at birth that allows us to see only what is good.  We read or hear about the injustice in the world or right around the corner and it often weighs on us like a plague.  Our hearts cry out, “When will the pain end.”

Being alive means dealing with the world until we can no longer deal with it.  “For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.”  Have you ever felt like this?

What Jesus is saying is that it is possible to reach a point in life that we can no longer see.  Our eyes close and you just shut down the intake valve. Our heart becomes calloused because someone wounded us in such a way that made us say, “I can’t let this happen again.”  And this person wasn’t a neighbor.  It was a friend, or a parent.  It was the people who were supposed to take care of us.  And the only way we can deal with it is to close the world off and become numb.

So often we meet people who are angry or confused or don’t want to see the truth and we walk away with the impression, “They’ve got a closed mind.”  But what Jesus is saying is that it’s not the mind that’s closed.  It’s the heart.  Something in life has broken them and the only way they can protect themselves is to shut down.  New information just means potential pain and that’s not going to happen.  And sometimes that person is us.