Right or Easy?

Life. There's just so many definitions that you can give it, so many things to be compared to, so much that has been said to describe it, but I think there's none that truly fully covers it all.

I like the one that says it's choices that leads to various different consequences and outcomes that you won't know or see until you're there. From Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" to Tolkien's "And wither then? I cannot say" in Lord of the Rings... I like it not because it's an easily agreeable truth, but rather it is a truth that needs courage to understand and embrace. It's not a beautiful truth, but it's not a sad one either. It doesn't carry any amount of emotion unless you allow it to.

There's a quote by Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that always struck me as having deep meanings and it takes one to experience it to really understand. He said during the end-of-year banquet in the wake of Cedric Diggory's death, "Remember Cedric. Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory."

We don't often hear this. It's always been said, this is right, that is wrong; do what is right, refrain from the wrong. But there is the grey area -- there's the time when you will have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy. And wither then? What outcome would it bring? Bilbo said he couldn't say, neither can I, or would know, until the choice is made.

I think it happens most when we are faced with a challenge -- it's easy to just give up, to just run away and don't care, but we know deep down in our hearts that that would mean leaving our responsibilities, perhaps even to the extent of disobeying God. When we want so much to fight back because of mistreatment from others, when we really think it's disadvantageous to us and we ought to stand up and defend ourselves -- that's when God wants us to shut up (to put it very bluntly).

Is it easy to just shut up and say "I forgive"? We know the answer. Is it easy to spread gossips and hurl hurtful words to defend ourselves? We also know the answer. But it's a CHOICE. And I think the factor that lead us to decide what to choose, ultimately, is God's LOVE. Not because we love, but He first loved us.

It takes a lifetime to learn to make the right choices, until the right choices are also easy ones. It takes a lifetime to follow the Holy Spirit.