A Sisyphean Task

I love legos.

I loved them as a kid, and over the last few years, I've rediscovered my enthusiasm for the interlocking building blocks with seemingly limitless possibilities for projects. Anyone who visits my office will see a collection of some of my creations on the shelves behind my desks. 

Legos are a nice diversion from some of the stress of work, but I also find that building a set helps me think through problems carefully and methodically, sometimes coming to a solution I wouldn't have considered otherwise. The more lego sets I build, the more interested I am in trying more complex assemblies and free-form ideas. 

Enter Sisyphus.

I just completed a mechanical Sisyphus sculpture that's not really an official lego set. You have to scour the internet for parts before putting together this great design by Jason at JK Brickworks.

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was the founder and first king of Corinth. He was savage and vicious, but also crafty and cagey. He tricked and angered the gods in a variety of ways so that when they finally brought him to the underworld, he was given a truly cruel punishment. He was sentenced to push a massive boulder up a hill so as to take every ounce of effort he had in his body. As soon as it was at the top, the boulder would roll back down, and Sisyphus would have to start all over. 

Like that, for all eternity.

That story gives way to the term, "a Sisyphean task," which refers to any undertaking that is arduous and seemingly never ending.

So. 

Without going into details, I've had a challenging couple of weeks—the kind that really test your patience and perseverance. The kind where the right course of action may be easy to identify but incredibly hard to carry out. The kind that stir up all the wrong emotions and attitudes, even when you know what the correct ones should be.

We are commanded by God to do incredibly non-instinctive things that take all of our human notions of self-interest and self-preservation and turn them upside down. 

Because that's how the Kingdom comes. 

Turn the other cheek. 
Forgive seventy times seven. 
Carry your oppressor's gear for two miles if he asks you to carry it for one mile. 
Love your enemies. 
Pray for those who persecute you. 
And the list goes on and on.

When I was a kid, I used to think that the disciples must have been pretty dumb. It seemed they could never understand what Jesus was telling them or how he was instructing them to live. I thought, "boy, if I was alive back then, I would have just done what he wants them to do!" And then, on our trip to Israel this summer I had an epiphany—that it probably wasn't that the disciples didn't understand Jesus' stories or metaphors; it's that what he's asking is so hard.

This is why the prosperity gospel is so troublesome in my opinion. It seems painfully obvious that the clear promise of Christ is that if we truly follow him and reject our basest, earthly desires, we can be assured of hardship. Our hope comes from knowing that we have the Holy Spirit with us as our Counselor, and God has proven time and time again that he will always give his people "just enough" to make it through the Chaos they are facing. It's why a common prayer for the Hebrews was to give them feet for the path, rather than to make the path smooth and easy.

Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." I have been spending a lot of time in Galatians 5 and 6 lately, and I'm blown away by how much I see Paul's words speaking into my situation and calling me to a higher model of interaction with others. 

In these chapters, love and humility reign, even when we're tasked with calling out each other's faults. We see the list of the Fruit of the Spirit, and we're reminded to "put off the acts of the flesh." To our English ears, "of the flesh" prompts sexual connotations almost immediately, but included on that same list are hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy.

When I'm hurting, it's really tempting to start in with those acts of the flesh to recapture personal power or control over the situation. 

But I'm pretty sure that's not what dying to self is about.

It's not what the way of Christ is about.

So it shouldn't be what I'm about.

Lord, help me treat my brothers and sisters with respect as fellow image-bearers of God. Give me the ears to listen with empathy. Give me words clothed in humility to express my thoughts. And through it all, may you be put on display for the world to see.

Let us not become weary in doing good.

A Sisyphean task, to be sure, but it's how the Kingdom comes.