Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Significant life

Gel group tonight was pretty interesting. Especially after the tedious, frustrating day I had. We talked about lives of significance. What makes a life significant? For me, you first have to define what you mean by that. Its such a broad term and what may be so to one person, isn't to another. From the Christian worldview, its leading a significant life in the kingdom of God. Its making an impact for God. But, to be significant in God's kingdom all we have to do is what were were made to do. All we have to fulfill is our purpose. Our purpose in the kingdom is doxological-- fancy word for saying giving praise and glory to God. That's it. That's our entire purpose. We are to give praise and glory to God in everything we do. Unfortunately, that purpose doesn't fully satisfy most people. We want to make a viable impact. And to make that impact, we have to make a significant impression on someone or something. Now this is where it gets fun. Say a guy walks into a store and sees a robbery in place, stops the robbery and single handedly captures the criminal and saves the day. That's significant right? Say a girl sees a hobo on the street one day, and the next day takes them a meal. That's significant too right? Which one is more so? Is giving someone who is sneezing a kleenex significant? It may not be to others, but to that person sneezing their guts out through their nostrals it is. Is takeing some time to go chat with a old person in their old folks home significant? To most of the young generation its not, but it probably made that old person's day. To lead a significant life, one doesn't have to chain themselves to a tree, stop a bullet, save the world, cure aids or anything else (not to say that's not important...) But to be significant in someone's life, all you have to do is love them. All you have to do is take a little bit of time out of your busy schedule to love someone. Go that extra mile and get out of your comfort zone. We should do this because Jesus made a significant difference in our lives by loving us. He loved us so much he did the ultimate sign of love. He knew, knows?, that to make an impact on our lives, all he had to do was love us unconditionally and give it all to the glory of God. Jesus's life fulfilled the human purpose of living (praise and glory to God). And by doing that, he lead a life of significance. Mother Theresia lived a life of significance because she loved. Paul, Peter, Mark, John, Luke....they all loved and look how significant their lives were. Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. By doing that, by loving unconditionally and limitlessly, we'll lead lives of significance. What's awesome about that is, we'll never know how much of an impact we've made on a person till way down the line. You'll never know how much that kleenex ment to that person at that time. Pretty awesome,huh? All you have to do to be significant is to love. How simple is that?

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