Life's struggles

Isaiah the prophet (Mark 1:2)
In In Extremity John Robinson examines the poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins. His thesis, as far as I understand it, is that Hopkins poetic energy arises out of discomfort. The discontinuity between his natural desire for tranquility and spiritual surrender and his choice to live a life under the discipline of zeal and spiritual conflict act as his muse, driving him to ever more wondrous creativity.
It set me thinking. How much am I infected by the modern instinct to harmonise life and instinct? As Robinson suggests, today people think self-denial is a dirty word, and self-fulfillment is the mark of a successful life. For me, I think that my self-denial may have come as a career choice. I have no natural instinct to teach young people yet I did so for 25 years. Is that time wasted or is the conflict it caused between the quietly confident problem solver and the public orderer of others' lives precisely the fertile soil for human flourishing?
I don't know. But what I do know is that prophets choose a difficult path. It seems God invariably calls them out of where they are comfortable, where they naturally find fulfilment and into a place where they are rejected and denied. So is the path for John the Baptist. So is the path for Jesus. Are you or I willing to take that path? 
Again I don't know. But what I do know is that all who follow Jesus will at some point be asked exactly that question.

A straight path

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