DANGERS OF THE LAZY RIVER

Michael Ryan

One of the most popular attractions of Water Country is a stream of water, perhaps the width of a parking space and maybe 4 ft deep, gently winding throughout the park. They call it the Lazy River. You can lie on a raft for as long as you like and gently glide around, resting and getting barbecued by the sun. It’s amazing if you just want to relax, though as I remember, it’s often very crowded.

By contrast, the most thrilling attractions involve a lot of steps and sometimes a long wait to get on the slide or in the tube. Not as many people are willing to attempt those, either through lack of patience or the difficulty of climbing the stairs.  Perhaps they don’t enjoy the closed in feeling of the long tubes. I greatly prefer the long shooting tubes that take your breath away, over the Lazy River any day.

Of course, that’s all for fun. Real life is another matter. It’s not a bad analogy of Matthew 7:13-14.

[13] “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. [14] For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (ESV)

To my eyes, Jesus begins concluding the Sermon on the Mount beginning back at verse 7. The Sermon provokes some to despair, claiming, “That’s impossible!”  It prompts others to lace on their spiritual running shoes for a long marathon of grueling effort. Neither giving up nor applying human effort are correct responses.
Perhaps the best way to describe the appropriate response to the Sermon is to be intentional. Understood rightly, the Sermon generates a soaring vision that creates a passion in the soul, a longing and a hungering for righteousness, as expressed in the first few lines of the Beatitudes. The truly blessed person exercises humility, hungers for God, and braces for persecution. Now, nearing the end of the Sermon, the right response is to neither give up nor to try to white-knuckle it in human effort, but to ask, and to persist, and to even plead, if you will, by pounding on heaven’s door with an increasing intensity, saying, “God, I can’t do this. Please create your character in me!” Then there is a reminder to brace ourselves for a life of challenge, knowing that following Jesus will involve persecution, opposition, and swimming against the tide. Sunday morning we will talk about Living Intentionally. While the Lazy River is fun and the greatest danger is a sunburn, drifting in life is guaranteed destruction. You can see the outline for Sunday’s message here.