Cross bearing beams

I received an e-mail.

It was spam without a can. But what it advertised was priceless.

“LOSE WEIGHT BY TAKING A SHOWER”
It said.
“It just doesn’t get any easier than this”
It said.
“AOQILI…PREMIUM SEAWEED SOAP”
It said.

Seems that in Japan, they’ve sold 28 million bars of AOQILI formulated weight loss soap in a single year. Seems the Chinese believe that the extract from deep seaweed soap has special penetrating and emulsifying properties that allow it to penetrate the skin by osmosis and react with the fat deposits that are directly stored between the skin and make them blood soluble.

I am not making this up.

Apparently I can belly up to the food bar, eat my fill and then some, and wash that man right out of my hair (and stomach).

Sweet. For $17.95 a bar of soap, I can lose weight and essentially do nothing more than I do every Saturday anyway, whether I need the shower or not.

Sweet. According to the Wall Street Journal, it’s like liposuction but with no suffering. Sweet.

Isn’t that just like us? We want what we want with no suffering whatsoever. But Christ understood true spirituality to be far more involved, far more painful, far more ultimately rewarding.

Jesus told his disciples (them, you, me) to pick up our crosses and follow. There is an inherent difficulty there. It is not sweet, nice, without pain. It is often hard, difficult, sometimes even deadly.

It is discipline and hard work. It is study and deep, deep prayer. It is sometimes fasting and real supplication. It is getting out of the house and feeding someone. It is telling a complete stranger about someone you can’t see, touch or hear but who has made all the difference in the world and beyond for you.

It is walking to the cross, blood dripping down your shoulders and from your side, each step an exercise in agony.

Life doesn’t come easy. I’ve truly found that few things in life that have meaning do.