Discovering that your world is more than just you puts the hurt on an already aching heart.
A wise person once said that selfishness is at the root of most (if not all) discontent and self-centered seeking. In other words, the more you isolate yourself, the more you focus on what you don’t have. Many people spend the majority of their waking existences tallying up all their wants and classifying them as needs. Like a kid drugged with Saturday morning commercials that turns every cartoon watching break into a premature Christmas list, turning our focus inward only magnifies the gap within and feeds the obsession to fill it and to be filled. Happiness is unwisely defined by the abundance of what (or whom) we possess.
We scoot things to the top of the importance list that maybe should be kept a notch or two below the rest. We praise love over wisdom, forgetting that wisdom teaches us how to love. We want success over patience and wealth of every sort over poverty of any kind. We would rather be faithless than judged—would rather be in a relationship of an unhealthy bent than alone and deep down; dreamless if it would prevent the ache of desire from sneaking up and staying behind. Avoid pain, avoid loss, avoid need. Always forgetting that we are vessels, not simply pure content. “We” aren’t in our depths.
Like a glass that has been emptied, rinsed and dried, we are sparkling and clean and ready to go—to be offered to another and to serve by what we bring to the table. We were not made to sit behind a door, stacked neatly in the dark. Sometimes we would rather rush the process, fill ourselves to the brim and sloppily carry ourselves to the table. But in doing so we forget that we are an instrument of service and not the guest everyone has been waiting for. In our efforts to carry ourselves, we become damaged and awkward. We were made to do more than hobble. We were made to be presented. We are not the prize.
We are the offering.
Like Christ before us, we are to pour ourselves out for others. This does not mean becoming a doormat. It means that when it is truly all about Him, it is even more truly all about them—and not about us. It is not about how bright and shiny we are, but it is about what is so bright and shiny within us. We struggle so long and so hard for things that don’t last. We build up treasures on earth that will not follow and that frequently do not bless. They are there just to be there, but are not necessary or beneficial. And we should think about that.
Why do we have what we have and for whom do we have it? Blessings are good. Love is good. It’s not that you should live in a box on a cool and shady corner. But life on earth is about more than filling our toy boxes, and it is definitely about more than survival. Open, open your eyes … and live.
In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father Philippians 2:5-11, TNIV.
