(What if I’m just God’s material?)
… “Just God’s material.” Only someone who the King of the Universe has formed and given breath for the sole purpose that it pleased Him to have my personality, talents and “who I am” on the earth, if only for a short time. “Just God’s” …just His.
I don’t know why I base so much worth on what Popular America deems as worthy. Even the things that I have accomplished, the love I have shared, and the friends I have made, get forgotten about in a quick moment of failure. I start feeling sorry for myself, start feeling like there is little purpose for my life if I am “not even ______ material.”
I’m being vague… on purpose. This blog is written 99% for me, because I need to hear it, not because anyone else does. But it applies so well to all of us. We think: “I am not junior executive material” when we don’t get the job. “I am not marriage material” when the relationships we’ve had haven’t worked out. “I am not star material” when the fame never comes.
Maybe it won’t come. For several possible reasons. Perhaps it was ordained from the beginning of time that it won’t. Perhaps it will come, but it wasn’t the right timing. Perhaps we didn’t do our best or we made wrong decisions and that’s why. Perhaps neither is correct, but “life happened” and God didn’t intervene. Maybe he didn’t care if he intervened or not because he knew our purpose would still be achieved without it.
Sometimes I forget that the purpose of life isn’t just to be happy all the time. (Even if it were, we don’t achieve it so well.) Those who live out that anthem – who have complete fame, tons of money, who party all the time, have unfathomable amounts of sex, and who use drugs that make them feel blissful for hours or days on end… they usually end up as the most depressed with one or more suicide attempts. And we know… those are extreme cases. We don’t all want to be the most famous, have the most money, and most of us want love more than meaningless physical touch.
We just want a little…we don’t want it all. However, we say that… and then years or months later, we forget that that’s all we wanted. Because now we want something different, or better. It is so hard to stay happy.
I believe when God formed people in his image, the purpose of our lives was just that: for our actions to look like him, for our words to sound more like him, and for our hearts to care more about what he does, and that the point is to tell that story with any and every achievement we do have. “Well of course,” we say. “Of course we’re supposed to be good and love people, but that’s so generic and isn’t helpful in times of failure. Besides, if God had wanted us to be just like him, why didn’t he make us that way to begin with? If he wanted to reveal himself on this earth, why doesn’t he just do that himself, instead of granting that huge, unachievable task to us and making it so un-obvious? Is the goal of ‘being godly in daily life’ supposed to make me feel better, even if don’t get the job/spouse/fame?”
Hmm… it may not be the best pay-off (right now), knowing that sometimes, those accomplishments aren’t thought of as great by Popular America and are only appreciated by God. But it certainly makes us some of the more defined characters in the big story…and sometimes it is the best pay-off. (“But that is just another way of wanting fame and wanting happiness.” — Not necessarily… it’s a way of knowing we have purpose). Donald Miller wrote in “Blue like Jazz” that every great story has a setting, conflict, climax, and a resolution. We get to be in a story that God created, and like every good movie, there are good guys who usually do all sorts of noble things that only we (the audience) sees…that no other character sees, and then there are those who care about their own fame, wealth and importance; either having little to do with the overall story or who are trying to sabotage the story (knowingly or unknowingly). I feel like, if I remembered at all times that the point of my life is not to tell my own story, but to help the plot of the whole movie, then getting that extra step up the ladder wouldn’t mean so much to me. This, of course, depends on what I believe about heaven, and/or how important helping other people means to me. It also depends on my view about God and if I want to help his story be told.
“Who is it being told to besides God, though? What’s the point of that?” – It’s being told to us, by other people…and we’re telling it to whoever we’re around.
I don’t see God enough in daily life, and I forget what the story is supposed to be. I don’t think of God very often, because even the good that people do, is usually selfish and is never attributed to God (or Jesus, the one who taught us how to live in flesh and be like God). So the storyline gets lost.
I have a friend who once said that sometimes she envies the journeys of other people, i.e, the story they get to tell and experience. I thought that was profound. I often think the same thing, and the funny thing is, I have tons of interesting things to share about my life, several accomplishments, and experiences (luck or otherwise) that have happened to me that haven’t happened to many people at all… and I’m mostly unsatisfied. Am I just spoiled? Yes, partly. And I think it’s just our nature. We’re worth something for a while, and then after a while, we’re not anymore. How sad. I’d rather be content being someone he’s shaping into a key part of the big story and not just someone who is preoccupied with myself. It’s not to say that being junior executive or the next great movie star is not telling God’s story. If we are star material AND God’s material, that’s great and can sometimes be marvelous. But if we are only star material, then we don’t have much purpose.
How incredible, to be chosen as an actor in God’s movie… to be hired by the Creator. To be God’s material. To be God’s.