Why does this have to be so hard?

Last night at CONNECT, we were discussing our world today and the difficulties involved in living as God calls us to live. I remembered a time when I was teaching about the garden of Eden to a fourth grade CCD class. One of my students ask, "If God didn't want them to eat from the tree of knowledge, why did He plant it in the first place?" After recovering from the shock of a ten year old asking a question that was at once simple and incredibly deep, we talked about how without the possibility of disobedience, there could not be obedience. Without the opportunity to disobey, we would not really be obeying. Without the opportunity to not love God, we cannot actually love Him; it wouldn't be love. I think the same is true in terms of the struggle to live as God calls us to live. Without the struggle, living that way wouldn't be real. It isn't just that the struggle makes it more meaningful, the struggle makes it possible. It seems that the more it costs us to live as God calls us to live, the greater our capacity to live in accordance with His will. What we choose not to do, is just as important as we choose to do.