The Better You Get the Harder it is.

  I was talking with a student the other day in our zoom classroom (these are strange times) about how much harder dance gets the farther you advance in it.  She had been telling her friend how many classes she took each week and her friend postulated that it was easy for her because she had been training for so long.  Immediately I saw a picture of sanctification -what my children's catechism book describes as "the process by which God makes sinners Holy in heart and conduct." 
  I look at my children struggle with such obvious sins daily: failing to love one another as themselves when required to share toys or play pretend to the other's specifications for example.  It makes me think of the baby students in pre-ballet who's hands inadvertently rotate out when they try to turn out their toe; who struggle to conquer the basics of bending their knees in a turned out plie without their bottom sticking out behind them.  This is the beginning stages.  It all seems so hard, so impossible.  How could that little person develop the coordination and self-possession required to master the movements of even a  supporting dancer in the corps de ballet?  And yet, time after time, it happens.  Over years, through sweat, blood, tears, and a huge amount of brain development that only time can allow, a tiny dreamer becomes a full fledged ballerina.  And truly, there is very little doubt in my mind as I look at those tiny dancers that some day, if they are willing to make the sacrifice and commitment, they will become a ballerina.  I wish I had that same confidence when I consider sanctification, yet, that's exactly how it works!
  Years ago when I was caught in some glaring besetting sins I thought, "if only I could work free of this I'd be doing just fine," I think I even had the audacity to make a similar comment to a friend of mine.  But the thing about walking alongside Jesus is the "farther" you go, the more your realize the depths of your brokenness and helplessness; you might say the "better" you get (“you are made” is a truer statement) the harder it gets.  I wonder sometimes as I observe the lives of a rare shining example in the faith how it can be so easy for them to exude the love and joy of a life lived in Christ.  How effortless it looks!  How natural!  So much like the effortless grace displayed by a ballerina as she executes even the most challenging steps.
   I consider too the idea of the temptation of Christ (bear with me, this is a less developed thought).  I have been struggling with the reality that Christ was "tempted in every way as we are, yet was without sin".  How could very God be tempted by sin?  Doesn't God hate sin?  If I hate something (like black jelly beans) are they actually a temptation to me? But I have heard it said that Christ was tempted far beyond any temptation we could ever experience simply by the nature of the truth that at no point did He give in, so it continued to mount against Him.  He was completely sanctified (though for Him it was never a process of becoming but one of proving) and so His road was the hardest possible.  This is a comfort.  Wherever I am in my process of being made holy in heart and conduct, however stilted my soul movement quality (like a dancer in the pre-ballet class of life) when God the Father looks at me, He has full confidence that some day, through blood (primarily that of Christ's), sweat, and tears, because He will make me willing to make the sacrifice and commitment required (Phil 2:13), I will be made like Christ (if only, finally at the day of His appearing Phil 1:6) just as that pre-ballet dancer may turn into a ballerina.  And amazingly, in the meantime, as my heart still struggles to become fluent in this language of obedience, when the Father looks at me, He sees superimposed over my failures the perfect obedience of Christ who was tempted far beyond anything I can ever expect to encounter in life yet without sin (Rom 5:21).
  Now my task is self-forgetfulness as I fix my eyes on the author and perfecter of my faith and strain toward the goal trusting that He will enable me to lay aside every sin that clings so closely and would hinder my growth. Be encouraged with me, if we are in Christ, then in the end, perfection is guaranteed. Keep digging in.  It won't get easier, but it will get better!