Ever wonder?

No matter how much you dread a certain pending situation or event, somehow you end up getting through it just fine. And the dread isn't really serious dread, after all: you weren't really afraid that your mortal life would be over, or that you would become seriously injured or deformed, at least in most cases. You're nervous, you're anxious, you're worried, but it's a "comfortable"--for lack of a better term--level of apprehension. If you don't think so, just try to imagine what your job would be like with no co-workers to deal with or problems to solve; or what your studies would be like with no exams or difficult concepts to work through. ...Yuck! There must be some level of stress in order to keep life interesting. Likewise, there must be some level of apprehension to accompany the more stressful times.

Many of my friends tell me they're happy. I don't have any millionaire friends among them who sit around and do nothing, so I can't speak for them. But everyone I know seems to be overcoming difficult things on a daily basis. It seems to be part of humanity to undergo and then overcome stress. After all, it also seems to be part of humanity to welcome a "break." What's a vacation unless it's a "break" from something, whether interpersonal relationship dealings, or complex tasks, or the unending routines of household management?

I was talking with a few friends over Thanksgiving, and we happend upon the concept of fulfillment--specifically in lieu of C.S. Lewis's "Surprised By Joy", which I haven't read. I think I want to read it, though, because it sounds like it might speak to this issue of life as we live it. There has to be something to hope for, but as a hope--not as an actuality--because any fulfillment that can be attained in this life will be dissatisfying. So hope is the better thing, at least as long as we're still on earth.

As far as overcoming obstacles, all of these small accomplishments are like small foreshadowings of the great obstacle of death that we are to pass through. Perhaps that is why it's so difficult for us to remind ourselves that we can never "deserve" or "earn" heaven; it's just not possible. We'd like to think we can.

Just like we like our anxieties and worries to be taken seriously, and we like to be applauded and congratulated (or at least we congratulate ourselves) when we overcome them.

But can you imagine what real dread is?
How about dread of something that really cannot be overcome by our power?
How about dread of the loss of heaven--something we cannot attain by our own worthiness or our own justification?
Lasting dread: not just a stress to make life interesting, but rather, eternity without God.

I don't know but that it must be some kind of virtue to even partially comprehend this type of dread--and then more virtue again to accept God's mercy in its stead.