At Ease in Zion

Comfort has two faces. When life is good, comfort becomes complacency. We stop praying as hard, stop reaching, stop growing. When life is hard, comfort becomes escape. We reach for the phone, the snack, the show, anything to stop feeling.

Amos spoke to people in the first kind: “Woe to them that are at ease in Zion.” They were safe, wealthy and settled, and they had stopped caring about anything beyond their own ease.

Proverbs describes how it happens: “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth.” Not all at once. A little at a time.

Every time we run from discomfort, we train ourselves to quit. Every time we stay with it, prayerfully, we train ourselves to grow. Which face of comfort is pulling at you today?