Pressure

We live in a world full of pressure. Adverts present us with the perfect couples, immaculately dressed and beautiful, yet also with perfectly presented and behaved children complete with colgate smiles. They both have successful careers, fun hobbies, strong family ties and close friendships. Oh yes and both drive fantastic washed and polished cars and live in immaculate houses.

How do we ever attain that? It is a subtle pressure to strive to be more like them, to have the same things, to live the same lifestyle. That is one source of pressure, one set of messages that we are bombarded with day by day.

When our lives don't measure up to the ideal the consequence is guilt or a sense of failure; oh no my children are missing out, shouldn't I be able to do this and that too! There must be something wrong with me I just can't cope. Just look at so and so...

Who puts that pressure on us? The reality is that I do, I put that pressure on myself. I want to be seen as successful, I want to measure up, I want others to think I am coping, no more than that, that I am thriving. That's so often what mitigates against us stepping off the treadmill.

But the remedy to that is that gospel, that tells me I am valued because I am in the image of God and he gave his Son to save me. It tells me that I can never reach God's standard so he sent his son to do it for me and then credits me with the perfect life, whilst he willingly pays for my failure.

Such love frees me from the expectations of the world around me. If God accepts me I am truly accepted. If God loves me I am truly loved. If God promises me a future I have a future worth looking forward too.

Often my problem is that I am too wedded to this world and its definition of success and the future it sets before me. In his book Mere Christianity CS Lewis wrote this; “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.”

This world is the hotel room, the new creation will be home, I need to re-orientate my life to live in the light of that reality.