To read part 2 in this series, click here.
If social media is to be believed (a rather large if), then your life isn’t quite as cool and happening as everyone else’s – and even though you know it’s an illusion, you can’t help but feel like it’s true on some level. Because long before social media even existed, you likely had a nagging sense that your life wasn’t measuring up. Such distortive comparisons can create shame out of thin air – tempting you to believe that your value could actually be determined by such impermanent things. So yes, it’s an illusion . . . and yet we can’t seem to resist.
But there is a greater illusion that goes largely undetected. It’s an illusion that best exemplifies an atheist’s modes operandi – it is the fallacious notion that somehow it is up to us to give our own lives meaning. If we’ll just be clever enough to make all of the right choices, acquire all of the right knowledge, and own all of the right stuff – with a little luck, we’ll be able to coast across that finish line with a modicum of satisfaction. This is the type of reductive expectation fostered by an ontology incapable of assuming anything else from a pitilessly indifferent universe.
But the Christian faith subscribes to a very different ontology – believing that our existence is purposeful. A purpose that isn’t contingent upon our ability to figure it out. For the Christian believes we are all invited to join God in what he is already doing – but we don’t bring purpose or significance to what God is doing because we’ve joined in, but rather, in the joining in, our lives are given purpose and significance. Is this not the meaning of Romans 8:28? “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
My wife Doreen and I have raised seven children to adulthood on a meager income, in a humble home — to the amazement of most of our friends. And while there was a measure of good stewardship on our part in managing what we were given – it remains a mystery, even to us, how we were able to do it. But what was more than evident to us, was the abiding grace of God manifesting itself in our lives, even in the midst of our most difficult times. God was faithfully working his redemptive purposes with the unexpected grace of his abiding presences – reminding us that His grace is not merely sufficient . . . but is in fact overwhelming!
It is nearly incomprehensible for us to consider the claims of Matthew 10:29-31 – to consider that if God can care for a simple sparrow, how much more are we to him? But even as you draw your next breath reading this sentence, it will likely not occur to you that even that breath is a grace of God. That, in fact, every moment of life is held aloft by the grace of God, is indeed a breathtaking thought. All this boundless grace, ever-present, going largely undetected. This is the profound reality existing just beneath the surface of all the illusions we’re tempted to entertain – inviting us to lay aside our own foolish agenda . . . and come know what it means to live in God’s kingdom, daily.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on stillchasinglight.wordpress.com.
Featured Image by Will Bolding
[…] To read part 3 in this series, click here. […]