The Christian life: Safety?

Needless to say I've been going through some growth.  I know it started a long time ago, but it has really come to a head in recent months.  Those words of Jesus in that book we call the Bible have wrecked me.  Just about all of Matthew 5, 6, and 7 have sent me into a tailspin.  And if the Sermon on the Mount weren't enough, there are the other things Jesus has to say.  You know like, "Take up your cross and follow me."  

Take up your cross and follow me?  To us living within the walls of comfort in the west during this 21s century, those words simply do not resonate with us.  We must ask the question, "What if he really meant this?"  And of course the conclusion one reaches is that He did and still does.  Obviously one has to be mindful that they do not turn their zeal or reading of scripture into something that is not false and it has to be read in context, but Jesus' words stand alone on themselves.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it best when he said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."  The cross is not some cute little thing.  The cross is a brutal and terrifying thing.  But oh us Lutherans and our paradoxes, we know that brutal and terrifying thing is also beautiful and life giving.  And that's what our Lord calls us to.  

Jesus calls us to carry our cross, and to suffer and die with Him.  To go to the desolate places of society and to become uncomfortable.  The Christian life is not about comfort, and if it becomes about comfort it is a false sense of security.  Christ says "Come die with me."  And by looking out into the world the deal becomes we either go and die with the world, and that includes by being "comfortable."  Or we go and die with the Lord.  The One who shed His blood on a cross for us to reconcile the world unto the Father.  In His death there is life.  In his life there is also death.  But that uncomfortable feeling of death and that brutal suffering of the cross is what makes life worth living.  We can waste our lives in our comfort, or we can lose it for the sake of the Gospel.  Count me in on the latter, and God help me.

Thy will be done.