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    Deadlines are necessary, and pressure is a good thing. In spite of all the appropriate warnings we hear about stress, the ideal state is not an environment totally without it. At first blush, you may disagree with me. But let me tell you a story.

    In an old black-and-white episode of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone,” a mobster dies and finds himself in a gorgeous penthouse in a high-rise casino. Things were perfect! Every time he placed a bet, he won. Every joke he told elicited belly laughs. Every beautiful woman he met gushed affection for him. He had everything he had ever dreamed of having. And it was effortless.

    Eventually, however, he began to feel restless and bored. Always winning and always getting just what he wanted had somehow numbed his ability to find joy in anything. In his undemanding environment, he began to crave a challenge.

    So the stress-free, always-victorious tough guy went to the gray-haired fellow who appeared to be the curator of the place. He asked if maybe God hadn’t made a mistake by sending him to heaven. The cordial host said that God hadn’t sent him to heaven. In that exchange, the mobster realized he had been consigned to hell.

Duty, work, and challenge are necessary elements of life.

    Although we sometimes fault God for creating Planet Earth as a place that tests our mettle, challenge is wholesome. Just as lifting weights builds muscle, facing the routine trials and occasional catastrophes of life builds character. Against the common view that the Garden of Eden was a paradise environment because there was no adversity there, I beg to differ. Adam and Eve were assigned the task of working to tend the garden. Their sin made the task far more difficult — and downright unpleasant under some conditions. But duty, work, and challenge are necessary elements of a life that would experience the joy of accomplishment and triumph.

    We tend to grumble when we think we’re getting a raw deal or that life is being unfair. But it is not unfair for any one of us to have to pull her load, earn his keep, or otherwise justify the space he or she occupies.

    “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors” (James 1:2-3, The Message).

    Your greatest fear today is actually your greatest opportunity. With God as your partner, you can face the challenge and grow from it. The ultimate vexation is neither struggle nor failure but a life so monotonous that it offers no victories over hardship.

© 2000, Rubel Shelly. Used by permission. From Rubel Shelly's "FAX of Life" printed each Tuesday. See Faith Matters for previous issues of the "FAX of Life."