Last night, I was feeling kind of down about myself. I have a lot of struggles that I am quite certain many people don’t have. I remember thinking about my blog from last night and praying at night as I wasn’t feeling too well either, “Lord. Sometimes, I’d just like to get to live a normal life.” My mind started considering what I had said then. A normal life? Whoever said I was to live a normal life?
The thought has been on my mind much today. Did Jesus come and die and rise again just so I could go to work, make money, come home, enjoy myself, and then eventually die? Did Jesus come just so I could get married and have kids and have a family and leave more for the next generation? Did he come just so I could go to church every Sunday? Did he come so I could have a game night with my friends?
There’s nothing wrong with any of these things. They’re all great things to do. However, Jesus came so that we might have life in the full. He came not that we would avoid life but that we would experience it. Jesus did not come so we could go about life the way it went about before he came.
I was reading later and came across this Nelson Mandela quote which has also been attributed to Marianne Williamson:
it is our light not our darkness that most frightens us
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
I remember talking to my roommate last night about Seminary and my hopes that we would rock Seminary. Well why not? What should we say? I hope we’ll go and be two ordinary students and be forgotten when we leave and just wind up as faces in the crowd.
No. We need to go and do the best we can! Doing the best we can will hopefully inspire others to do the same. It is amazing that if we thought a child wanted to study to win the National Spelling Bee, that we’d think that was tremendous. If he wanted to be a winner in the Olympics, we’d tell him to give it all he had! If he wants to be an outstanding Christian though, we tell him to be sure he’s humble.
I’ve nothing against humility, but humility doesn’t mean that you sit around and be unnoticed. If you can make a difference in the world, then by all means do so. Guess what! You can! You can because you are an image bearer of God and you were put here to reflect him. If you reflect him, you will make a difference.
So what is the goal? Be the best you can in what you do. C.S. Lewis said our problem is that we are far too easily pleased. We settle for an ordinary life when Christ wants to give us an extraordinary life. Let us not let fear keep us from the blessings of God.
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