I remember an evening in May of my Senior year. It was the ‘awards ceremony’ for all of the seniors who had accomplished…I don’t know, something worthy of an award. I can’t remember if I got one or two, probably one, but I remember getting upset because my fellow IB classmates were leaving with six or seven different awards. Clubs, sports, choirs, ASB – things I hadn’t participated (or at least excelled) in. I remember feeling like I had wasted four years of my life, because I hadn’t stretched myself to the absolute limit. I hadn’t taken advantage of every opportunity, and used the skills given to me to their utmost.
I also remember an evening in Mexico, my sophomore year of high school. Our leader, Dennis, looked at and us and told us that every minute of our day goes into a bank. At the end of our lives, we get to cash in the minutes that mattered – the ones where we spent our times wisely, and on things that mattered. But every hour of TV, or extra sleep, or what-have-you, would be lost forever. Time we could never get back. Time, essentially, wasted.
I can’t tell you how these thoughts haunt me sometimes. I think we all wonder whether or not we are doing enough. Am I living to my full potential? Do I ‘participate’ enough? Do I give enough of my time? I worry about these things. I worry about what other people will think of me when they see how my life looks ‘on paper’.
“God does not demand of me that I accomplish great things. He does demand of me that I strive for excellence in my relationships” (37)
It takes faith to let go of worrying about what your life looks like on paper.
Have you ever been walking along, thinking to yourself, and realized how absolutely ridiculous your face must look at that moment? Sometimes I accidentally say something out loud, I must look so dumb, but I am absolutely involved in wherever my thoughts are at the moment.
Wouldn’t it be great if that’s how it was with relationships, and how we spend our time? We get so involved listening to someone’s story, or helping them with something, that we don’t even realized how the people around us must see us. It doesn’t even cross our minds.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could stop crossing our own minds?
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:
In this life, we cannot do great things
We can only do small things, with great love.
Do not think that love, in order to be genuine,
has to be extraordinary.
What we need is to love
Without getting tired.
~ Mother Teresa ~
Eph 2:8-10
ReplyDeleteFor it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
(from New International Version)
It's the beautiful irony of following Christ--His sacrifice shows us how much we can do without Him (nothing) and then He re-creates us by the Spirit to be able to serve Him, even preparing the works in advance. And yet it's the "being" not the "doing" that's important. I had a professor once who asserted that it's not so much what you do as why you do it. I've often thought that this verse agrees. Good post.