Constructive Pressure

I do not wish to place destructive pressure on you, but constructive pressure.

But tell me — do you truly believe that constructive pressure exists?

Imagine a deadline. What do deadlines look like? Everyone imagines them differently.

I picture them as a container that holds nothing beyond its borders, or as a line cut off at both ends — a segment that allows nothing to stretch beyond its two terminal points, where one point marks the beginning and the other the end.

Let that container or cut-off line represent time.

Then tell me — is time infinite?

Can we act outside that container or beyond that line of time?

For although time in itself may be infinite, our time is not.

Our time is measured and given within limits — contained within one vessel, between the ends of one finite line.

No one has ever lived longer than a few short years.

And the time required to achieve success — whether in nature or in society, in the body or in the character — is also limited.

A tomato seed cannot bear fruit in two months, much less in two days or two minutes. The success of its fruit depends on how faithfully the sower respects the boundaries that God has assigned to the plant.

The question, then, is this: which of these boundaries is wider — ours, or that of the success we seek? Which container has the greater capacity — the sower’s, or the plant’s?

Which line is longer?

Is the timeline of our life-force longer than the timeline of the task we must fulfill for our life to be extended — and made eternal?

For in this world we have been given a limited lifetime in which to fulfill the conditions that grant us entrance into paradise.

How much of our time have we dedicated to fulfilling those conditions?

Are we still waiting for the “right time”?

Or are we deceiving ourselves into thinking the conditions are flexible?

For if the conditions were flexible, then deadlines would not be deadly, and their endings would not be final.

But deadlines would not be deadlines if their boundaries were not fixed.

If our allotted time is shorter than the time required for success, how will we ever succeed if we keep waiting for that so-called “right time”?

And with what will we justify our request to enter into eternal life?

Isn’t such waiting a sure path to ruin?

And if we are already now capable of beginning to fulfill the conditions, does not the very existence of the deadline urge us to start immediately?

And if we were already capable of beginning long ago, doesn’t that same deadline convict us — showing that we have delayed that which should have started long ago — and all the more compel us not to delay further and deepen the damage already done?

A more hopeful and reliable path to success is to strive, even though our container or line is smaller than that of the task — to still attempt to fit, or, as one might say, cram the work into our container.
To labor earnestly to fit — whether by expanding our container or narrowing that of the task, whether by extending our line or shortening the one belonging to the work.

Like a man running to catch the last train — one that is slowly preparing to depart, or has already set off on a road of no return, yet is still within sight.

Or like a father who suddenly realizes he has been starving his family for weeks, and has only one ordinary sack, while around him lies an immeasurable abundance of food that he must carry home to save them.

He stuffs the sack with more than it can hold, and when every corner and every inch of space is filled, he keeps packing until the food overflows — he can no longer lift it by the handles, so he must embrace it with his whole body and carry it that way home.

He even puts food in his mouth to carry, filling every small pocket and every possible spot he can find.

No one wants to find himself in such a narrow and desperate situation — yet accepting that state is far better than missing the train entirely, or never delivering the food and losing forever those who depend on us.

• Matthew 5:29 — “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”

And all of us, through our daily choices, willingly carry ourselves toward that irreversible condition — step by step.

Meanwhile, most of us are in that uncomfortably tight place where, if we were to choose rightly, we would have to labor and gather like the lowest of street-folk — yet we live as if we were the richest, not only in this world but in the entire universe.
We live as though we have all the time in the world — as if our time had no end, no container, no line of duration — as if the work that must be completed before entering eternal life could be finished with a single blink of an eye.