On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living

by Alan Noble

If we aren’t careful, medical and scientific language can obscure or replace the very thing it’s supposed to be treating. It can draw our attention away from the conscious, moment-by-moment responsibility of living by reducing the difficulty of that responsibility to a label.

And if we trouble ourselves with all the other things we are burdened with, the things of tomorrow or the next hour or minute, we will be overwhelmed. God asks only that we serve Him now. Choose this second who you will serve, and then serve Him by doing the next thing.

This is precisely why we must see that each choice to do the next thing is an act of worship, and therefore fundamentally good. Feeding your pets is an act of worship. Brushing your teeth is. Doing the dishes. Getting dressed. Going to work. Insofar as each of these actions assumes that this life in this fallen world is good and worth living despite suffering, they are acts of faith in God.

We love ourselves because we are lovely before God, and what other opinion could possibly matter more than God’s?

You must try to see the nice things around you now. You cannot wait until life slows down, or you feel better, or you are cured or free or whatever to accept the good gifts God gives you. You can’t. This is nonnegotiable. In my experience, with few exceptions, life doesn’t slow down, and some things don’t “get better.” You either choose to receive the beauty and wonder of this life in the midst of chaos and distress or you never will.25

By watching you endure, others will know that it is possible to keep going. They will have a model for perseverance. You don’t know whose life you may save by honestly and faithfully enduring a mental affliction.

God is not in the business of tricking people by hiding their sins from them. So when your heart condemns you, remind yourself that your heart is not the judge of the universe. It’s not even the judge of you.

Your task is not to feel right but to act right.

Usefulness is the sole criterion for the World, the Flesh, or the Devil. But you have no use value to God. You can’t. There is nothing He needs. You can’t cease being useful to God because you were never useful to begin with. That’s not why He created you, and it’s not why He continues to sustain your existence in the world. His creation of you was gratuitous, prodigal. He made you just because He loves you and for His own good pleasure. Every other reason to live demands that you remain useful, and one day your use will run out.

God’s peace is in no way constrained by my imagination.

My emotions and my thoughts will betray me, but I know He is faithful.

Your task is to be faithful: to do the next thing. And when you cannot get up on your own, let someone carry you, knowing that in due time you will be called on to do the same for others.