Daily Devotionals

Devotional: June 5th

"How hard can it be?" I heard a young man ask that of three comrades one afternoon in Upstate New York as they were preparing to go off the high dive at a local swimming pool. How hard indeed? I remember asking the same thing on a number of occasions. One of them involved water. For some reason hard and water just never seem to go together.

I watched as the one young man climbed the tower to the high dive some twelve feet above the level of the decking for the pool. "You have to do a dive," shouted one of his buddies. Again came the reply, "No problem. How hard can it be?" Yep. How hard can it be? It's liquid. You pour it for crying out loud. How hard can it be to dive into from twelve feet high?

The young man walked out onto the diving board and bounced on it a couple of times to check its tension. He then took a few steps backward, walked forward and launch himself into the air. I don't know what all was going through his mind at that time. He had gone off the low board earlier several times with little trouble other than he usually went a bit too far over and smacked his heels somewhat when he hit on his dives.

As I watched I cringed as I saw his body carrying over too much. His dive was not going to be straight in; it was going to be at an inverted angle. He was going to enter the water with his body leaning almost forty-five degrees. As I realized this I saw the look on his face. He realized it, too. He suddenly doubled his body into a ball right before impact and hit the water with a mighty cannonball splash. His friends exploded into laughter. When the young man climbed out of the pool I heard him say under his breath, "That was close. How hard can it be? Yeah, right."

"How hard can it be?", Abraham must have thought from time to time. Serve God and receive blessings. How hard can it be? Then God said, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." Genesis 22:2 Sometimes it can be very hard. Godly living is taxing and requires the utmost of dedication. How hard can it be? Just as hard as we make it.

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