The birth of Jesus is celebrated on the 25th December, with some traditions making that observation or remembrance within a few weeks of that date. No one denies that the date of 25th is not a “fact”, it was a simple arrangement to remember his birth.
The “simplicity” of grace is obviously costly for Jesus, and also for God himself. It seems it is this simplicity that many could and would not accept as the way of truth, the only way to end this cycle of feeling not great and wanting to do better but unable to, the head and the body finding each other just slghtly short of energy, and the cycle goes again – the wheel of struggle is a reminder that we could all be in our own journey of “wheels”, but any of those had been done by many many others in eons gone by.
If grace is too simple, we want something more “us”, more fitting to our intellect, or slightly more “clever” or “sophisticated”. Perhaps something that you need to sacrifice, for which then you gain something. The simplicity of this has not been found. If it has been discovered or harnessed, it had not been shared. Surely if someone found an alternative more “consumerised” way of release from what seems like a cage that surround us, our mind, our body and our spirit, they would have not held back, and would have written it, social medialy announced it, and gone wild about such discovery. Well, they could hold back on the “secret” technique or formula that led to the release from the bondage of the world; surely they would want to let it all be known that he (or she) got it.
There is no alternative to the grace of Jesus, on which we acknowledge who we are and there is no way back to God. That grace is available, but has no meaning to us until we accept Jesus. Is it “simple”? No, it is costly to Jesus. It is and will be costly to us who have accepted Jesus that in our obedience to him we seek to be like him. But this is not a “cost” to us, since it is the freedom and unmeasurable joy we have in Jesus that we have assurance of who we are. Others could assess us in all manners of way, put us in various “boxes”, assign tasks and jobs to us that do not align with our aspiration or talents, and so on. But there is nothing that can take away the assurance of Jesus in us. We could lose everything, yet we gain Christ.
The choice is certainly yours – each to choose for ourselves. We might have over-complicated things. We may not want a “simple” way to truth. There got to be cost to us to gain the way. Cast our mind back to however long humans have lived (whatever religious, or historical, or anthropoligical, or planetary persuasions we have), have we found such a way apart from the way of Jesus? Are we any closer to finding such a way apart from the grace of Jesus for all? You could be the person who have found that way. But so far, Jesus is my choice of the way to truth.