Drumroll Please...The Meaning of Life--in 629 Words

 “The thought doesn’t come often, but when it does, it’s pretty scary—what if I spend the rest of my life waiting for some definite direction from the Lord, and when I’m forty or fifty I’m still waiting to begin on any real life-work?  ….there must be something eternal for me to be engaged in, besides incidental opportunities along the way!”

Dear young woman who wrote that in my journal a few years ago,

Can I tell you what happened to me the other day? I spent part of the afternoon picking up branches around the perimeter of one of our hayfields.  The snow has receded enough on the south-facing slopes that we can see grass again—or at least the dead grass stalks that were left from last year’s hayfields.  It was slow, monotonous work, but the beautiful afternoon made up for it.  A few optimistic birds were singing about spring, and the brilliant sunshine was warm enough to make up for the chilly winter air. 

As I was walking back to the house to get supper, it hit me: this is it.  This is life. I’ve arrived at that nebulous thing called “being grown up.”

Not only that, “this” is my life work.  This living from day to day, receiving my daily work with my daily bread. This learning to walk by faith, not knowing the plan for the remainder of my life.  This buying up of opportunities, and realizing that they are neither incidental nor accidental. This realization that immortal souls are cloaked in the highly mortal bodies that are always crossing my path, and so every interaction is “something eternal for me to be engaged in.”

God has given each of His children a life work—to live.  Living entails a host of difficulties, disappointments, perplexities, and surprises.  But it is in the context of “just” living, that God meets us.  In fact, and, as Paul the apostle said, “To live is Christ.”  No so-called “life work” can be carried on through the passage of all of life’s seasons; it must be laid down eventually.  But the real kind of life, the life that is Christ, only grows stronger as we get closer to heaven—and it even crosses over into life after death, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent.” (John 17:3) 

 Life, when lived to its fullest, is all about Christ, not about my work for Him.  If only I could get this solidly in my head, life would be splattered all over with glory. Most of the time I obsess over my to-do list and yes, often I try to make a to-do list for God too.  How much better to slow down to watch for His fingerprints in my day, and listen for His voice and His approaching footstep.

Do you catch the beauty of this kind of life?  It is the dust of earth being blown into living significance by the breath of God.  It is the filling up of weak earthen vessels, with the glorious treasure of the gospel of God.  It is washing dishes and scrubbing floors in the anteroom of heaven, and enjoying fellowship with the eternal God while bumping over muddy roads and getting little kids bundled up to go sledding.

It is strange that human sweat and tears, when shed for Christ’s sake, can be converted into heavenly treasure.  Strange that the mundane and the sublime can seem so far removed from one another—and yet rub shoulders.  Strange that the warm sunshine can so transform the chill of winter.  Strange that picking up sticks from a sodden hayfield can be the prelude to such a revelation about the meaning of life!

And It's All Free!

I could see my patient struggling for air.  His breathing was fast, and his face was preoccupied, etched with anxiety.  The alarming of the oxygen saturation monitor didn’t help.  Yet a few minutes after being put on oxygen, he was relaxing, leaning back in the bed, talking to me about how sick he had been, and about how terrible it is not to be able to breathe, and about how much the oxygen helped.

“Funny how much we need that stuff,” I said with a laugh.

 “Yes,” he said, thoughtfully, “And it’s all free.”

He didn’t look much like a philosopher, with long, greasy grey hair, an unkempt beard, and nondescript clothing.  But His statement was the most profound thing I heard all day.

We all know that costs are going up.  Some people think about it in Wall Street sized terms.  Most of us around here think of it in terms of the cost of a gallon of gas and a loaf of bread.  I suppose that soon enough we’ll fall over the fiscal cliff and inflation is going to skyrocket and all that.  But did you ever think how much of life is free, and can never be under the greedy control of mankind?

Yes, the air we breathe is free, all of it.  The sunshine that warms us is free.  The colors in the sunsets are free, and so is the singing of the birds.  The rain that refreshes our land is free, and so is the wind that fills us with vigor and clears away the smog. 

And just think, God gives us all this without requiring us to earn a bit of it! “He causes His sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Matthew 5:45

Of course, I suppose we might observe that it doesn’t cost God a thing to create the sunshine, and paint the sunset, and send the rain, and tune the song of the birds.  Would He be so generous if it cost Him something?  What if it cost Him the highest price He could pay, the only thing that really mattered to Him?

Because that did happen, you know. He paid that highest price, the death of His only Son, so that you and I could come to live with Him in heaven, cleansed from all our sins.  There was nothing more that He could have given for your life—your eternal life.  There was no higher ransom that He could pay to save you from hell.  So what does He charge for this eternal life, for which He paid so dearly?

Nothing.  The only requirement is faith.  Trust.  Belief that He actually did it for you.  Simple agreement with the facts of the case—you are the sinner that Christ died to save.

Yet so many people choose to reject this offer.  They would rather have a salvation that they have to earn.  The idea of taking something so magnificent without being able to do anything to deserve it, is offensive to them.  Every day they breathe in God’s free air, and enjoy His free light, and listen to His free concerts, and tour His free outdoor art galleries, and live the physical life that He gave them so freely, and yet they reject the eternal life that He desires them to have above anything else.  Just because it’s free.   

Tell me, does that make sense?

Single--and Happy?!?!

 I’m living the life I always dreaded.  I’m in my late twenties—and single.  No major adventures on the horizon—and single.  I’ve even discovered the beginnings of my first wrinkle—and I’m still single.  But by the wonder-full grace of God, I’m happier and more fulfilled and content than I ever have been before! 

That’s not to say that I don’t eagerly hope to be married and have a family and home of my own someday.  If Mr. Right showed up tomorrow, I would be thrilled. =) But it does mean that God has proven to me that He is enough, and that He can fill my life with richness and purpose and usefulness even outside of my “dream life.” 

This is the message I eagerly want to share with other single people, because I’ve spent most of my life under the illusion that yes, the Lord can keep my head above water as a single person, but that’s about it.  I pictured myself trying to survive with a brave smile, trusting that when I get to heaven I’d finally be happy, rather than thriving in God and exulting with His joy right here, right now.

But I believed a lie!  Psalm 84:11 says of God, “No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.”  Psalm 34:10b puts it slightly differently, “They who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.”  I take these verses to mean that if I’m walking in obedience and fellowship with the Lord, having laid my desires before Him, and He has chosen not to give me a husband thus far, that means that thus far, a husband would not have been the best thing for me, regardless of how I felt about it!  God is the perfect Father, and is “kind in all His deeds (Psalm 145:17).  Sometimes His goodness is demonstrated in giving, and sometimes in withholding—and I’m glad that it’s His job to decide what is best!  My job is just to trust, obey, and give thanks.

Yet how God has given, even when it seemed like He was withholding! He knows the womanly desires that He implanted in me, and He has met so many of those desires in unexpected ways, ways that hold benefits for many other people besides me.  No, I don’t have a husband to love, to help, to make a home for.  But I’m surrounded by lonely people of all ages, for whom I can cook, or mend, or clean, and for whom I can help to make a welcoming home where they can visit and be encouraged.  No, I don’t have children of my own to hold and rock to sleep and explore the world with.  But there are scores of children around me who come from broken homes, who perhaps were never wanted in the first place and are only considered a bother.  When I visit with them and teach the Bible to them, and shoot BB guns with them, we grin into each others’ faces and I hold them close and feel their arms around my neck and their hair against my check, and pretend for that moment that they are mine.  If their heart is warmed and comforted half as much as mine is, it’s worth it.

We single people have a mission in life just as much as the married ones.  We get to “fill in the cracks,” for needs in our churches and in society.  We can spread ourselves in multiple places and mobilize on the spur of the moment, to meet needs that married people aren’t able to meet.  We get to show the world the love and joy of God, to have a part in filling His heavenly home, and to help our fellow travelers in the family of God on their way.

One of Christ’s last commands was, “Love one another, just as I have loved you.” (John 15:12)  And that is, in words borrowed from The Sound of Music, a mission “that will need all the love you can give, every day of your life, for as long as you live.”  It’s also a mission that can only be accomplished by the power and love of God, when He reaches down in sheer grace, clasps our hands like those of a little child, and teaches us to transmit His love to the people around us.  

If you’re a single person who has been in Christian circles, you probably have heard, like I did, that God CAN meet all our needs and satisfy us in Himself.  But you may not have heard that He actually DOES!  That’s why I have kept persisting in my attempts to write this blog post, because God is worthy that someone should testify of how perfectly He works and how bountifully, too.  

There’s no magic formula besides the one we find hardest: trust and obey.  He asks us to trust Him, not by agreeing mentally that God knows best, but by putting ourselves at the mercy of His grace, without a backup plan in the event that God should fail us.  He asks us to be willing to love through whatever door He opens, whether it’s the one we were hoping for or not. To rejoice in all circumstances, whether we would have chosen them or not. And in everything, to give thanks, to make thankfulness our daily occupation—in fact, to pursue thankfulness as one thing we must not neglect to include in every day.  

Trust and obey. Is it a risky thing to trust the God Who sent His Son to die for you, who keeps the galaxies whirling in perfect synchrony, who has established mechanisms to keep your blood pH in an unbelievably narrow critical range? And is it too much to obey a God Who has only good plans for you, who withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly?

“Of course not!” we say.  And yet most of my life I’ve had the impression that trust and obedience meant a doleful struggle. So here I am to say that’s not so!  God’s blessings are all out of proportion with our deserving.  Here I am, having learned just a little bit about trust and obedience, such a little bit that I still fall into fear and worry on a regular basis.  But how God has blessed me and shown me His glory during these past few months—and He desires to do the same for you!

There is something even better than love, and marriage, and the baby carriage.  One man who made this discovery recorded it in Psalm 63:3, “Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You….My soul is satisfied.”  Nothing that life can offer—indeed, not even life itself—can offer more joy and fulfillment than the lovingkindness of God, something that is available for you to enjoy today, this very moment.

I simply pray that this glimpse into what God has been teaching me about Himself will encourage you to exult in the God that is yours, if you have trusted the Lord Jesus to be your Savior from sin.  And if you have not—well, have you found anything better than Jesus Christ and the life that He offers?  Jesus said, “The thief [Satan] comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy; I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

Such Kind Of Service

Well, here I am, trying yet again to figure out how to condense my life over the past few months into a blog post!  Several times I have tried to put into words the things that God has been doing, and always I was defeated by the magnitude of the task. How quickly the words multiply into something longer than most people have patience to read, yet without fully conveying the joy and wonder of watching God work

.

From the outside, my life doesn’t look too spectacular—lots of garden work in the summer and fall, occasional shifts as a nurse at the local emergency room, several Bible studies and kids’ Bible clubs throughout the week, and always plenty of plain old housework.  But this daily routine (or lack of routine, some days!) has been the framework into which God has woven joy, peace, love, and fulfillment, in larger doses than I’ve ever experienced before!  

There has been the unspeakable joy of seeing a couple of our friends come to faith in the Lord Jesus, and the thrill of rediscovering the Scriptures through their eyes as we study together.  There has been the immense privilege of telling children about the Jesus of Whom they know literally nothing—of Whom they have never heard except as a curse word.  There have been many opportunities to fellowship with other believers and serve them, which always brings great joy as I see Christ’s image more and more strongly reflected in them.

But the greatest thrill of all is that through these events and opportunities, I’ve been discovering God as a real Person.  Like King David said so long ago in Psalm 34:15, God is bending down to hear my cry and to do for me the things I ask, things that only He could do.  There is nothing like waking up in the morning and asking God to reach down His hand to work in our little town, and then watching all through the day to see the things that He is doing, and at last going to bed at night knowing that He has answered and that my work, because it is His work, is not in vain. 

He is so good to give us work to do for Him!  Our works are utterly useless to gain us forgiveness from sin (Ephesians 2: 8,9), but once we have believed in Christ, they are precious to God.  He both made us for good works and made good works for us, according to Ephesians 2:10. Sometimes the work He gives us to do means a real sacrifice of time or effort or sleep, or the willingness to pour yourself out in love and trust God with the likelihood that your love will not be fully appreciated or returned.  Sometimes it just means washing the dishes or vacuuming up the dog hair on the floor.  But regardless of the form that our service to God takes, it is His way of putting our hand on the plow-handle underneath His, and including us in the magnificent things that He is doing.  When He asks us to really expend ourselves for Him and for the sake of the gospel, but it’s not because He needs an extra boost—rather, it’s to give us a taste of the joy of working with Him, and of the satisfaction of gathering a harvest for which we have spent our sweat and tears. 

Yet when it comes down to it, no matter how hard we have labored, the work of God is always a case in which, at the last, we simply “stand by and see the salvation of the Lord.” (Exodus 14:13).  When He begins to move, we can only look in wonder from the sparkplugs in our hands to His lightning bolts, and gasp, “So THAT’S the God we have!!”

The very insignificance of our own labor shows off the surpassing power of God.  When we see hearts softening and Gospel seed sprouting and new growth appearing, we look from our poor efforts to the magnificence of what God is doing, and say, “That could only be from Him!”  

A man many miles ahead of me in the journey of faith once wrote:

“Here is the great secret of success. Work with all your might; but trust not in the least in your work. Pray with all your might for the blessing of God; but work, at the same time, with all diligence, with all patience, with all perseverance. Pray then, and work. Work and pray. And still again pray, and then work. And so on all the days of your life. The result will surely be, abundant blessing. Whether you see much fruit or little fruit, such kind of service will be blessed... “ --George Mueller

Plug In!

A few days ago I woke up extra early and decided to enjoy the luxury of lying in bed listening to some hymns on my mp3 player.  It certainly was lovely—the perfect way to begin a Sunday morning.

The music swirled through my earbuds, lifting my soul to think of God and to rejoice in Him and marvel at His works.  Usually when I listen to music I’m in the car or working in the kitchen, with lots of background noise, so I miss the finer points of the music.  But lying here in the silent room, I could hear the delicate musical devices, balanced by tasteful strokes in the bass.  I let myself be lost in the music and the delicious sensation of absolute rest.

Suddenly, it all stopped.  My earbuds had come unplugged from the mp3 player.  I was lying in a silent, pitch-black room.  The magic was gone. 

I fumbled for the cord, and plugged it back in, and the music swirled on, picking up a few measures from where I had left off.  It hadn’t stopped, of course.  I had just unplugged.

What a lesson.  I sit by my window at night, looking out on the little valley that is our town, watching a few cars drive by on the road.  We live in a rural area, so there aren’t many lights to defy the darkness of the night.  Yet the darkness is far deeper than night.  Broken homes, broken dreams, broken promises, broken bodies, broken social systems, broken resolutions, so very many broken hearts, and all of this multiplied in every little valley in every country across this broken earth.  And I know that my grief is only a drop in the vast river of tears that have been wept down through the centuries.  

But is it possible that, existing in parallel with this broken weeping world, there is another world of rejoicing and hope?  Is there music being sung somewhere, if only we could “plug in?”

I open my Bible and find the answer.  The music swirls around me.  Not an absence of sorrow, for here are tones of the greatest sorrow of all, the sorrow of Love rejected and hung on a cross.  Yet that very cry of agony ends in the triumphant cry of new life.  And the music swirls on, jubilant and victorious.  It sings of a Child born, and a King triumphant, of a bride won, and a bridegroom satisfied, of a battle fought and the last enemy conquered.  It sings of a plan accomplished and a work finished, of a son come home and a lost sheep found, of a home filled and a table laid, of promises completed and hopes fulfilled.  The song goes on, and the singer is God Himself, to tell of Love at last rewarded, and faith at last made sight, and hope fulfilled beyond our dreams.  The rich strains span all of time and eternity, one harmonious whole in which every note makes sense.   The voices of the morning stars that sang together before the beginning of the world, are mingled with angelic jubilation over sinners repented, and answered by the countless voices of those saved ones themselves, worshiping the Lamb Who is worthy.  The trumpets at the walls of Jericho, and the harp of David, mingle with the voice of the last trumpet and the harps of the elders in heaven. 

Sorrow is woven all through the song, and yet it is sorrow that has fulfilled its purpose.  This is not a song of frustration, but of victory.  It is not the song of well-laid plans gone awry, but the song of a perfect plan fulfilled just as expected.  The pace is measured, not too fast and not too slow.  Not a note is hurried, nor does a single note lag.  The conductor is perfectly in control of his orchestra, though the instruments range from the devil himself, to the created world of nature, to mankind, to angelic hosts, to the very Son of God.

Is it possible that this song is being sung even now, as I look out at the dark valley and feel the weight of a collapsing society and a disintegrating world, pressing in on me?  Surely the sacred pages answer, “Yes,” and remind me that that world is, after all, more real than this.  That song of the triumph of God was being sung long before this little world hung in space, and it will continue long after the stage has been dismantled and the blood-bought singers gathered home.  I can take my place even now in that choir, and add my voice to the chorus, "To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever." (Revelation 5:13)  All I have to do is plug in.