A Little Yeast...

“...[M]ake every effort to add to…natural affection, love.” – 2 Peter 1.7,8

“Now that you have...sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.”— 1 Peter 1.22

Experience shows – and Scripture inadvertently affirms – that human relationships have different points of origin. There are those with whom you share a near instantaneous bond of affection; these you ‘love’ naturally, viscerally, without willful premeditation; and those whom you must choose to love by an act of your will, in the strength or, more likely, weakness, of your character.

For instance, you and Jane have been fast friends since the first day of middle school when you found yourselves, alone, in the same corner of the cafeteria, reading the same book.

Conversely, you've known Diana since the day she moved in next door, when she 'popped' over to introduce herself and then politely informed you that your flowerbeds needed watering. Whether consciously or not, Diana seems to be constantly making light of the thing – the very thing! – which is causing you greatest pain. And she has an uncanny knack for drawing out your weaknesses while disparaging those traits you have always taken for your strengths.

Nevertheless, Christ calls you to love both women. But how? In what way?

At a certain point - it is inevitable - your sin, and Jane's, will make a mutual show of itself. And when it does you must add agape, the love which, with its connotation of self-sacrifice, enables you to rise above your feelings, and do the thing that is in the best interests of the other person (John 3.16). Somewhat ironically, there may come a time when you realize your natural rapport has prevented you from learning how to really stimulate or provoke each other toward love and good deeds. You may realize that you are better at commiseration, and affirming each other’s prejudices, than telling each other the truth. When you do, you must take pains to alter your course; to 'add agape' and trust it to deepen your friendship in ways that simple affection cannot.

In contrast, Diana has never inspired your affection – from a natural point of view you feel little other than annoyance toward her, sometimes even profound animosity such as you would feel for an arch enemy. But Scripture anticipates this! Thus when Christ commands us to “love” our enemies He uses the word, agape, meaning that we can choose to rise above our petty emotions and show kindness where we might feel disdain, or generosity where we are want to be stingy. If we do, the seeds of Love will, at a certain point, bloom into natural affection.

Still, there is no disguising the fact that, with Diana, you must take the long way around: remembering birthdays; initiating phone conversations; taking pains to express those things you do appreciate and admire, even if they are often obscured by your differences.

As you do, slowly, you begin to see her in a different light – what you took for lack of sympathy was simply an inability, or reluctance, to express herself; what you experienced as cold-heartedness was merely pragmatism, a pragmatism that, in a later moment of personal crisis, manifested itself as practical, almost life-saving, care.

But it is not only your perception of Diana that has changed – you are changing too, the both of you.

Where she has gained compassion, you have grown in fortitude. Where she has gained the courage to be vulnerable; you are learning to stand by your convictions, without encouragement or praise. You don't notice these changes at first for character development is the kind of thing one only notices retrospectively. But the fact is, you have changed... both of you.

And something else has changed too.

Perhaps it is after a long summer away that you begin to realize - and Diana does, too: somehow, precisely how neither of you quite knows, but somehow you have become more than neighbors... you have become friends.

Nevertheless, from a practical standpoint, it remains difficult to find the motivation to pursue relationships which are 'hard.' Why should I call Diana when it is so much easier to pick up the phone and dial Jane? What is the point of exerting so much energy only to see an intolerable relationship transformed into a (still, perhaps) marginally satisfying one?

The reason is simple: although phileo is preferable - as the ice cream cone on a hot summer afternoon - only agape will remain (1 Cor. 13.13). It is that little bit of heaven which, if you are faithful to work it in to the relationship, promises to work its way through the whole dough (Matt. 13.33), transforming not only it, but you. You and Diana may never laugh at the same jokes; you may never read the same books; or plan a picnic just so that you can indulge in your mutual appreciation for reciting poetry under the cool trees - but you can rest assured that Christ will use your relationship to further your reliance upon Him, and so mold you into the person He created you to be.

Believing is Seeing

“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” – Ephesians 1.18-19

“Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS… So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.”

- Galations 3.7,9

We have all heard the old adage, seeing is believing - for it is in the nature of man to suspect those things which cannot be apprehended through the senses. But even the most cursory look at Scripture proves that - where faith in God is concerned - seeing is not believing. A great many of Christ’s contemporaries saw Him perform miracles but they did not believe in His Name. From a biblical point of view it would perhaps be more accurate to say: seeing is knowing.

For example, an agoraphobic may stand all day in the lobby of the Empire State Building, watching people travel safely up and down; but ask him to get into the elevator himself and he will look at you with incredulity and fear in his eyes. He has seen; he knows; but he doesn’t believe. At least not enough to act. In just this way, the Israelites saw the works of God for forty years in the wilderness; they knew – and had in fact witnessed - what wonders He was capable of, yet they did not believe.

Why not? In part because, though they saw God work, they did not take time to get to know His ways - that is, His character as it was revealed in the realm of their everyday existence. Instead, "they always went astray in their hearts," thinking more about their ‘deprivations’ than God's deliverance, and privileging their grievances over God's gifts. Like the agoraphobic, though they watched God perform miracle after miracle, they did not believe; at least, not enough to risk acting on what He had revealed.

The Bible teaches that faith, or the ability to believe, is a gift of God (Eph. 2.8) - that is, it only comes through revelation by the Holy Spirit. But belief, if it is authentic, must be followed by action - i.e. obedience. "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." What does this mean? It means that when God revealed Himself to Abraham, Abraham believed the revelation, in spite of its seeming impossibility. "In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken" (Rom. 4.19). As a result, though he was a sinful man, God honored him by granting him righteousness - that is, moral perfection in His eyes.

The very idea that someone with no past experience of God - no thousands's-year-old religious tradition or canonical body of Scripture to draw from - would have the courage, even the audacity, to believe is not only incredible, it is near to being beyond all human comprehension. Yet Abraham did.

He was seventy-five years old when God bid him go forth from his country, from his father’s house, and the land of his relatives (Gen. 12.1). But when God spoke, “Abraham went,” even though he did not know where he was going (Gen. 12.4). Ten years later, when God spoke to him again, saying, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them…So shall your descendants be” (Gen. 15.5), Abraham believed.

Can you imagine looking up at a great black sky glittering with countless stars, and, at the age of eighty-five, with a wife in her early seventies, actually believing that your descendants would someday rival them in number?

But (it is worth repeating) Abraham did; in fact, Scripture says, "Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform" (Rom. 4.19-21).

"Being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform..." When was the last time I responded to God with such assurance? And how might my perception of the world be different if I did?

Though it's hard to say when - perhaps at the moment his heart first responded in faith - Abraham's belief was transfigured into a new way of seeing; what was his ordinary, humdrum existence, became extraordinary because he viewed it through the eyes of faith.

Abraham no longer saw obstacles as hindrances - things that impeded or blocked his way - but opportunities to experience God’s character made manifest. Thus, rather than shrinking back in fear and disbelief when God asked him to sacrifice his son, the son of promise, Abraham “considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead” (Heb. 11.19). He ‘saw’ through the eyes of faith that God is not limited by any natural law, that he can move above, beyond, and outside the bounds of human reasoning, and so he obeyed.

Neither did Abraham’s faith divorce him from the world; it merely changed his attitude toward it. He did not become a perpetual stargazer, denying the pains and hardships of life, because he served a God with theoretical power to overcome them. No, he engaged life’s challenges; he endured its trials; and he endeavored to accomplish the tasks put before him, but always with one eye to the horizon, “looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11.10).

Like Abraham, we may not see God literally, as we see the ocean or the trees, but if we respond in faith and obedience to that which, through Christ, the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit, He reveals to us, we will begin to see things spiritually, through the eyes of faith. As we do we will discover and affirm the truth that few find - seeing isn't believing; believing is seeing.

Rags to Riches

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 5.4

In his great essay, The Weight of Glory, CS Lewis says, “There are no ‘ordinary’ people.” Cultures and nations rise and fall but people, all people, will last forever. If Lewis is right – and I believe he is - then it is fair to say that all human beings, in all moments, at all times, are progressing down one of two paths: the path toward becoming, in his words, an “immortal horror” or an “everlasting splendor.”

But how do you know which path you are traversing? The path of corruption or the path of greatness?

Christ’s Sermon on the Mount offers a stunning outline of the path to spiritual greatness. It hallmarks, in chronological order, the characteristic virtues of those creatures that are progressing along this path…

The path begins with poverty – not necessarily literal poverty (though the two are often inextricably linked) - but poverty of spirit, that state of spiritual bankruptcy whereby an individual, that is, I come to recognize what is not only my lack of spiritual riches, but my absolute depravity of them. I realize I am destitute, not only of spiritual wealth, but of influence and honor; my abject poverty makes me powerless to achieve anything for myself. Instead I am in a condition which compels me to beg for alms, for charity, that is, love, agapos – the embodiment of which is Christ in the flesh.

Such poverty of spirit leads to a state of mourning. I mourn over my sin; an affliction I cannot, of myself, remove. Mourning leads, in turn, to meekness which is not only mildness of nature or disposition, but gentleness of spirit. In our culture, no doubt due to its connotation of passivity, meekness is seldom praised. However it is precisely this quality of spirit which produces a hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness do so because they recognize their lack of the thing – in the same way that I hunger and thirst for food when my stomach is empty. Such people, because they are in tune with their own deficiencies, are, by necessity, apt to be merciful. Having been made dully aware of their own depravity, and consequently learned to look to God for the meeting of their needs, they are not motivated by a desire to use others. Thus they are not manipulative, but pure in heart.

Those who have – by Christ’s power – been set free from the compulsion to manipulate, control, and use others can, in turn, apply their freedom to making peace. They become peacemakers. And if, or – as likely happens – WHEN their efforts toward peacemaking fail, they are willing to be persecuted - to suffer insults and all manner of evils - for righteousness’s (that is, for Christ’s) sake.

In contrast, the inversion of this path highlights the qualities of those who are progressing toward a state of eternal corruption.

Rather than poverty, this path begins with a state of self-sufficiency akin to that which (presumably) possessed Eve in the moments before she succumbed to Satan’s lies. Those who are self-sufficient are often self-satisfied – they are, in the modern sense of the word, happy. They are getting what they want – that is, an endless measure of THEMSELVES.

Being self-sufficient or, as the expression goes, “full of themselves,” such people are often proud or superior. Rather than hungering or thirsting after righteousness, they often think they, themselves, are right. Consequently – how can it be otherwise? – they are unmerciful. For how can you exhibit mercy towards creatures who, at all times, fail to live up to your very high, very SELF-righteous standards?

Failing to demonstrate mercy toward others, such people often feel compelled to manipulate. They are highly skilled in the art of bending others’s wills to their own. Rather than making peace, they are makers of strife, contentious, quarrelsome. In the end, they are those who persecute, rather than those who are persecuted.

Ultimately, all human beings must arrive at one of two destinations. Those who go through life insisting on their own way and using others to get it must arrive at what is the height of spiritual bankruptcy, that is, damnation; whereas those who admit their weakness, surrender to God’s ways, and sacrifice themselves to serve others, must end in a state of spiritual riches. It is to them that Christ says," Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great” (Matt. 5.12).

Life in Him

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." - John 15.5

Throughout the New Testament Christ uses various analogies to describe the believer in relationship to Himself. He is a house; Christ is the builder. He is a lump of clay; Christ is the potter… John 15 is no different except that, in this particular instance, the analogy is organic. The vine and the branches are part of a living whole which breathes and grows and bears fruit; or else, if it fails to remain in the vine, suffocates, withers, and rots.

A living branch is different from a house or a piece of sculpted clay in that it is never quite finished. It could go on living forever, so long as it continues receiving nourishment from the vine. A house may be renovated and meticulously well-maintained; or it may fall into a state of utter disrepair. But once each stone is placed it remains there, unmoving, ungrowing. It can, in a sense, abide; but it cannot flourish! The same is true of the clay – it may undergo metamorphosis - a total change in form and appearance - but once it hardens and sets, once it has been thrown into the kiln, it can neither change nor grow.

In contrast, stands the branch. It starts out naked and small. Alone it is nothing, just a future bit of firewood, barren and brittle (John 15.6). But if it remains nestled into the vine, drawing its nutrients from the source, the branch will grow clusters of buds. At first, they are just little nubs – small and hard and sour – small foreshadows of what they might someday be. If plucked too early they will taste bitter. But if they are properly nourished they will ripen into beautiful pieces of fruit – full and soft and sweet.

Important to remember is that fact that the fruit cannot - indeed, should not - attempt to distribute itself. When the time is right the fruit will fall off all on its own or else it will be plucked by some desperate passerby who is hungry enough to stoop down and pick it up from the place where it has fallen, the place at the foot of the tree.

Just so, if we abide in Him, He will bring forth fruit in our lives; fruit that is a small reproduction of the Life we bear inside. Unlike the house or the finished sculpture, this fruit has the capacity to nourish others. It can give the Life that it has drawn. And not only once, but many, many times, for nestled inside each piece lay the seeds of Promised Future Life.

And yet - however marvelous and beautiful this is - it is a rare branch that learns the secret of abiding.

Most, being frustrated by the slowness – or seeming lack! – of growth, become deceived into thinking they no longer need the vine. Those who have lived long enough to experience the painful process of pruning may conclude that it is futile or masochistic to persist under such ‘intolerable’ conditions. Won’t we grow much faster, they reason, if we find our own rich waters to drink from, far, far away from here?

And so they literally break out, severing their ties from the vine, not realizing that in doing so they betray themselves, becoming guilty not only of adolescent thinking, but adolescent behavior.

They may indeed find waters; and these they may drink from. But the growth that such drafts produce will be deceptively short-lived. The buds cannot, under such conditions, grow into ripe, round pieces of fruit because they have been poisoned by waters which make bitter and desolate all who drink from them. These branches, and the infant buds they bear, will not only cease growing; they will ultimately wither and become grotesque – the asylum of insects and other parasitical organisms.

Conversely, the branch that abides in the vine will – indeed, it must – bear fruit. To do otherwise would be to go against nature. However, the aim and purpose of its life is not oriented round the fruit, but round the vine. This is the emphasis of its life – its raison d’etre, or, reason for existence. It finds security and rest in the vine, not in its fruit, for the fruit is but the natural consequence of abiding; not ‘the thing itself.’ “He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” It is one of God’s great graces that He bears fruit in a man’s life and then gives him credit (eternal reward) for having done so. If we abide, He will give us life, power, and rest in Him; all we have to do is let Him.

Suffering and Glory

For it was fitting that he...should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers…” – Hebrews 2.10-11

In the second chapter of Hebrews we are shocked to discover that the God of the Universe is not ashamed to identify with depraved humanity – with we who inhabit a world which GM Hopkin’s rightly described as “smeared with toil,” which “wears man’s smudge and shares men’s smell.” He through whom and for whom the world was made; who upholds the universe by the strength of His power; who is and was the exact radiance of His Father’s glory – the perfect imprint of His nature – this Lord, this God called us brothers, brothers!

He made Himself “a little lower than the angels,” friend to a fallen race of men – of fallen gods (Ps. 82.6) – in order that we could be redeemed, bought back, and reunited with the same Father from whom we both originate. Perhaps most magnificently, He not only did all this so that we could be made like Him, but so that we could be with Him in glory.

How did He do it?

First, by symbolically identifying a group of people as His own, the Jews; second, by speaking to them through their fathers and prophets; later, by delivering them from physical bondage in the desert of Egypt. Afterwards, in the wilderness where they wandered, He gave them bread from Heaven; and covered the ground with quail, all the time saying that He did so in order that they would know He was Yahweh, the benevolent, all-knowing, ever-existing, creator God. To these great lengths, He gladly went.

But even if all this was – or at any rate should have been – enough for them and, inadvertently, us, to come to know His character, it wasn’t enough to save us.

So He went further by becoming the bread. He suffered on the hill called Golgotha so that we could be delivered from spiritual bondage in the desert of our own souls; the blood He shed, by a kind of miraculous transfusion, became – and forever outside of time remains – our life, our sustenance and nourishment, the thing that will protect us from damnation and decay.

Of course, it is He who made us to desire glory (the inverse of damnation) and eternal life (the inverse of decay). This desire – this “eternity in our hearts” – is not some aberration, some narcissistic consequence of Eve’s indiscretion or Adam’s abdication. It is part of our divine make-up (1 Peter 5.10). No saint in honesty can look with disparaging eyes upon the promise of being awarded a crown. We hold fast to the promise that “if we endure with Him, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2.11-12).

But what we oft fail to recognize – what we sometimes, even, shudder to suppress – is the knowledge that, in order to identify with Him in glory, we must first be willing to identify with Him in suffering. It is only “if” we endure that we will reign; and "if" we suffer with Him that we will be glorified with Him (Rom. 8.17).

Thus Paul promises that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (3.12); or as the same verse is translated elsewhere, “they will suffer." We all want to identify with Him in glory; but who wants to identify with Him in suffering, or to endure the shame of persecution?

If we must endure, where, and to whom, can we look to find the courage to face such suffering?

We look to Christ, “the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” We take time to consider “Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that [we] will not grow weary and lose heart” (Heb.12.3); we gird ourselves up, summoning every ounce of the strength He has given us, every shred of resolve, to remember “that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us” (Rom. 8.18).

Having It All

"Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it,
Where is the director?
I want to see him."

- Soren Kierkegaard

One morning last spring my friend Madeline dropped by for a visit. We sat in lounge chairs in my front yard on the little circle of synthetic green that, in Arizona, constitutes our ‘lawn.’ Our babies, born a week apart, ogled each other beneath silk sunhats, groping now and then at a loose thread that sprouted between the faded quilt squares beneath them.

Madeline’s three-year-old, Lizzie, quickly made a game of tossing pennies into the stone fountain that stood beside the lawn. Occasionally she trotted lightly round the fountain’s base and, tucking her chin into her neck, abashedly made us guess at her ‘wish.’ When I suggested that, perhaps, since it was so terribly hot, she might have wished for a cold soda or an iced cream cone she said, “No,” more solemnly than I thought any three year old capable. “I asked God to make me more grateful.”

Madeline and I exchanged glances, at once baffled and delighted by her innocence and depth.

In between slow sips of iced tea we chit chatted about this and that – the books we were reading, a newly discovered recipe for chocolate dipped coconut macaroons – and at 11 o’clock shared a snack of fresh strawberries and crackers and cheese. By 11:30 the babies began to rub their eyes. “I believe our window is closing,” I said.

Lizzie, at my elbow now, looked up at me quizzically. “Miss Heather,” she ventured, searching stoically about the yard, “which window is it?”

I started to answer, then stopped myself, having grasped her meaning. “Oh, sweetheart,” I said, making little effort to conceal my amusement, “that’s called a metaphor.”

“A meta-what?”

“A metaphor. For example, have you ever heard anyone say, ‘It’s raining cats and dogs?’

“Nooo.”

“How about: ‘She has a heart of stone?’”

Lizzie shook her head.

“Please,” interrupted Madeline, “stop while you’re ahead.”

“I don’t believe I ever was - Oh, Madeline. She's an absolute dream.”

Madeline smiled. “Moments like this make it all worth it,” she said her voice trailing off “…which is why I am embarrassed to admit I sometimes fear I will wake up one day and wonder if I wasted my life. I’m terrified that perhaps staying home was the easy answer.”

I squeezed Madeline’s arm and told her I didn’t think there were any easy answers.

But after we waved goodbye I lingered a few moments on my front step, feeling a stab of regret that I hadn’t a better response to my friend’s admission. If she could only see herself through my eyes, I thought. If only she knew what she had gained compared to what she had lost…

Madeline met her husband in law school. They clerked together, graduated together, and after their marriage took a job together with a Phoenix firm. When they got married, Madeline was sure she’d return to work after having children. But two weeks into her maternity leave, her husband began to rethink his convictions regarding childrearing. He felt it was important for children to have their mother at home, particularly during their earliest years. And so, contrary to her own preferences, Madeline submitted to his wishes, choosing to honor him at the expense of her career.

Needless to say, she was not the kind of person with a predilection for easy answers.

I knew she loved being a mother. I loved being a mother. Yet I resonated with her fear - not because I felt ambivalence at my decision to stay home – but because I shared what I believed was Madeline’s underlying desire to live a purposeful life. I considered that all people harbor such desires – to live lives that have impact and, as worn out as the phrase may be, make some lasting difference in the larger world.

The desire for meaning and purpose are intrinsic to human nature. But how, I pondered, does one go about attaining these things? More specifically, how does one do so as a mother and a Christian?

THE PROBLEM

As a woman, the culture tells me that I should be able to have it all – love, career, and children – and that I am justified in pursuing my dreams regardless of the cost to my husband, child, and – above all – my relationship with God. Moreover, I am given the subtle but unmistakable message that doing something “important” and being a full-time mother are mutually exclusive.

In contrast, Christianity teaches that in order to find my life I must lose it; and that the key to living is dying. Thus the two states are directly opposed. To live a life of temporal significance – according to the world’s value system – I must devote myself to self-actualization whereas, to follow Jesus Christ and live a life of eternal significance requires self-sacrifice.

Madeline chose to sacrifice her own plans by submitting to the leadership of her husband. From a Christian standpoint, she made the right decision.

But if so, why are there lingering doubts in her mind, and the minds of so many women like her? If what we are doing as wives, mothers, and children of God is really meaningful in His eyes, why does it so often feel mundane and purposeless?

THE SOLUTION

I have come to believe that life often feels meaningless because it is meaningless. King Solomon surveyed the nature of existence and concluded that all things are absurd, futile, and without meaning. Whether you are a lawyer a mother or a world-renown tightrope walker “all is vanity and striving after wind.”

A man may build an empire today but tomorrow no one will remember his name. As the Psalmist says, “[There is] no remembrance of former [things]; neither shall there be [any] remembrance of [things] that are to come with [those] that shall come after." The Bible teaches that we cannot effect any lasting change in the universe. Whatever impact we are to have is in, through, and by the power of Christ at work in us “to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

Galations 5.6 says, “…In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

I thought again of Madeline. She was but one of a great many of the women I knew who had “put to death” their own plans in order to be obedient to the thing which they believed God had called them to. Madeline was staying home with her girls even though her preference was to practice law. Lucy, a surgeon, was working faithfully despite the fact that her real longing was to be a wife and mother. Jane had made great domestic sacrifices in order to care for her aging parents. And Elizabeth - who had been eager to cease working after the birth of her first child - continued after her baby was diagnosed with a serious illness - just so her family could maintain health insurance!

All of these women have drastically different circumstances; none of them is living the life she envisioned for herself. Yet each is stewarding her circumstances with a faith that is expressing itself through love.

Thus it is neither working nor staying home, mothering nor remaining single, that have any value. What is valuable is being faithful to God through the circumstances He gives – believing Him, hoping in Him, and staking our lives upon His Word.

Hebrews 4.2 says, “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they [the Israelites] also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.” If we are to live profitable lives, lives that, in God’s kingdom, “amount to something,” we must spend our energies believing in the gospel that was preached to us and the God which it reveals: a God who became man and died a sinner's death in order to reconcile us to Himself. It is this gospel - and not the gospel of self-actualization or self-empowerment - which must become the single, unifying power that holds our lives together. It alone must be the foundation upon which our life is built, the framework through which our every decision is made.

Ephesians 2.10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has chosen beforehand that we should walk in them.” The American mindset is that I am my own workmanship. The world is my oyster; and thus my destiny is my own. I must set my mind on the thing I want and work relentlessly until it is my possession.

But if the Word of God is reliable and true, if we are His workmanship then, like any master artist, He decides precisely what we are to be. He chooses the medium (whether oil, watercolor, charcoal), the subject (perhaps a portrait or landscape) and the period in which the work that is my very soul is rendered. We choose whether to comply with Him in the making, whether – in faith – to persevere through the circumstances He chooses, letting Him have His way, or whether we will dig in our heels and in defiance say, No, You must use this color! And how about sketching me in a grand old house by the sea instead of out here in the desert or the mountains or the swamp?

What is more, if we are His workmanship – His works of art, like living stones being built up into a spiritual house – then it is fair to say that He made us for the same reason that the painter paints her painting, or the sculptor sculpts her clay – she does so for the sheer joy of the thing! The process is certainly painstaking, but it is also delightful! And the outcome remains forever afterward something that brings glory to the Painter, something that proclaims to the whole universe just how magnificent He is.

Proverbs 16.4 says, “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose. Even the wicked for the day of evil.” The clause “for its own purpose” comes from the Hebrew word maaneh which, when translated literally, means “for Himself, for His answer or response.” Accordingly the King James Bible says, “The Lord has made everything for himself.”

Thus we find our life’s purpose in belonging to God, and being the thing He has made us to be. We are valuable because He says so. Specificities of application aside, He has made us to be conformed into the image of Jesus Christ; to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Such love, if it is genuine, is demonstrated through obedience: “This is love for God: to obey his commands” (1 John 5.3). Like Christ, ours should be an obedience that persists, regardless of circumstances and irrespective of cost.

If we believe Him – and spend our lives seeking to conform ourselves to His word – then we will become increasingly immune to the oft-times alluring but hopelessly mistaken values of our world.

“Having it all” will always be defined as having all of Him. John 15.5 says, “Abide in me and you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Only God can effect change in the universe. He accomplishes the work; but I can participate. I – with Madeline, Lucy, Jane and Elizabeth beside me – can allow Him to take the mundane and meaningless tasks that often form the substance of my days and use them to shape me into something beautiful, something that brings everlasting praise to His Name.