Well, here’s the first post. Hopefully I don’t scare TOO many people.
This is a document I’ve saved since sophomore year of high school, 2013. I just read through it, made a few grammatical corrections, but have left it as is. It isn’t representative of me today, but was central to my thought process all through high school. I love where I am at in life, and I can confidently say that God has brought me through to a place He wants me. I draw significantly from Alistair Begg here, but reference my sources throughout, so I feel no need to cite them here. Not all, or even very few, posts will be like this, but I think it’s a good start.
One last thing: this assumes the existence of God, as well as the Bible as His message to humanity. If you don’t believe those statements, I think there’s still value for you in here. I would ask that you read this in the, “What if…” mindset. I am not forcing anything on anyone, or attempting to stir up an angry debate, I merely want to seek Truth with you as another flawed human being. I welcome any and all dialogue and questions from anyone!
At any rate, here it is:
Here we go. It’s six am and time to start again. You roll over, hit snooze, and try to prepare yourself to face the day. Eventually you roll out of bed, get dressed, and throw some breakfast together. You get lost in thought and are almost falling back asleep when you look over and see that you were supposed to leave for work ten minutes ago. You rush out the door; barely remembering to grab your keys, and speed to work, except for that one spot you know ALWAYS has officers watching for speeders. Sure enough, there they are again. After you’ve put enough distance between you and them, you resume driving like a maniac to get to work on time. You make it, barely. Again. Your boss gives you the eye as you come in. “Almost late. You need to start being a little more responsible!” You start to apologize and find you hardly have the energy to make up a good story. He sees right through it. “Look, its ok to be late once in a while, but you show up late over and over! And you don’t even seem to care! You need to pick it up.” You say you’ll try harder tomorrow and finally get past him. It’s a rough day, busy all the way around. Your co-workers seem to be doing the usual slack-off, let you do it all, thing. You eventually make it through, after being yelled at several times and wanting to punch more than one person. Finally getting back home, you walk in the door exhausted and drained, both physically and emotionally. You watch some Netflix and doze off, wondering why you do it over and over. You remind yourself you have to pay the bills somehow, and isn’t this what you wanted anyway? You think, “Yeah, but this is so pointless. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Maybe you can relate to the above story, to one degree or another. Maybe it’s not as pronounced as that in your life, but you still feel it. Perhaps it’s going to class instead of a desk. You might even have little bursts of happiness through the day, and even long periods of time where you are perfectly content in your routine and friends and family. Or maybe it is that pronounced. Maybe it’s worse. You struggle through each hour, not just each day. You wonder if you’re depressed or what is going on. You long for the weekends and holidays, but can’t seem to ever enjoy them enough. Wherever you are at on the scale, you probably sometimes wonder: “Why am I still doing this? Is it even worth it? Doesn’t God have a better plan for me? Why don’t I have a dream, somewhere I’m reaching for? Am I missing out on life? DID I miss out on life? Is it too late? Did I make the right choice? Isn’t God in control of everything? How could I make the wrong choice then? Does God care? Does He even still love me?”
I have asked these questions and still ask them today. I struggled with this for so long and spent many sleepless (literally) nights and hard, lonely days figuring out what was going on, what I was doing with my life, and what God was doing with my life. And I still couldn’t tell you the answers half the time. Out of all that struggle came this. I wrote some of it at different points and wanted to put them all together in a single place in a bookish form for one, my own satisfaction and when I lose hope and faith, and two, to maybe encourage others and help them to find faith and hope in God. I pray that this can bless you. I think it is all biblical and God-honoring, but I make lots of mistakes. Whatever you take from this, know one thing for absolutely sure: God loves you. He always has and He always will.
Does my every day, mundane life matter?
(Shoutout to Alistair Begg for many of these ideas)
Ecclesiastes 3:1-15
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.
This passage speaks to our longing for something more than the grind of everyday life, described in the first eight verses. We all know the cycle of life, how we do the same things over and over, just as our parents did and just as our kids will do. We go to work to make money to buy food to live to go to work… etc. There are bright spots of happiness to be sure. Weddings, births, graduations, these are all great celebrations of life. There are also intensely sad times. Deaths, goodbyes, failure, these are all times of pain and suffering. In the end, what does it matter? Some have said that those eight verses contain seven pluses and seven minuses that all add up to zero. And this is true in some ways. Our life feels insignificant because we do not see an end result. We want to know we are heading somewhere, that all of this work is improving us, or our family, or the people around us. We want what we are doing to accomplish something, but at the heart of this is really a deeper desire. We want control. We want to direct our lives and feel that we are working toward an outcome that we can influence and determine.
But this is not the case. We are not in control of a single thing, no matter how hard we try. The seasons will come and go. We will age. Life and time will move on regardless of our efforts to freeze time and suppress change. How often do we wish we could “stay in this moment forever?” Too often. I have felt this so many times in my life, and it is frustrating and angering that I cannot take the moment and keep it. It is gone, no matter how hard I try to keep it with me. It seems unfair and even oppressive sometimes. We have worked hard to get to this moment, whatever it is, have we not? We think that we are entitled to at least some degree of control. But we are not, and the moment passes just as quickly as the rest. We are not in control and we cannot stop time. Life moves on.
But this is not the problem. Indeed, this is “the burden God has laid on the human race.” What? Why has God given us this burden? Why would He want us to be frustrated, angry, disappointed? Because He has greater things for us. “He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Our problem is not the movement of time and the cycle of life, but our perspective on our lives. We see only a snapshot of time. Rarely do we see or understand God’s overarching plan. He has set eternity in our hearts. Somewhere, we know there is more than this everyday life. But so often instead of giving us hope and peace, this almost drives us to more fear. Why? Because we begin to understand our own insignificance.
What are the names of your parents? How about your grandparents? Great-grandparents? Few, if any, of us can go farther back than that. We will not be remembered more than a few generations at most. We will never be remembered in the history books. Even if we are, will those books be around a few hundred years down the line? We will not have a lasting effect on this world. All our toil, our work is meaningless. When eternity is in the picture, we begin to feel so small. We distract from this realization with entertainment. Movies, TV shows, music, anything to give us a false sense of meaning, of belonging. As Twenty-One Pilots puts it in the song Isle of Flightless Birds: “We find our worth in giving birth and stuff/We’re lining our homes against winding roads/And we think the going is tough/We pick songs to sing/Remind us of things that nobody cares about/And honestly we’re probably more suicidal than ever now” We try to convince ourselves we have significance somehow, but we can only ever suppress the truth, never defeat it.
We begin to go from asking, “Where is my place in the grand scheme of things?” to, “Is there a grand scheme of things?” If my life has no real significance, does anything have significance? Of course, we have to answer yes, otherwise we fall into moral relativism and fatalism. God has created this experience for us. He has made a perfect world. “Perfect?!?” you ask. “I have no significance and a longing that will not be fulfilled? How is this perfect?!? This is a cruel existence!!” Indeed it is. But remember that God originally gave us a perfect world, untainted by death, by sin, by time even. I don’t want to make a huge theological debate here, but it makes a lot of sense to me that the Garden of Eden was timeless. There was no death, no goodbyes. God himself walked with us. It truly was perfect. Imagine knowing you would never have to see your mother die of cancer, never have to say goodbye to your childhood friend of eighteen years, never have to feel the pain of a lover leaving. Indeed, there was only joy. Imagine such an existence! The joy that must come with knowing you would never have to worry about the ending of anything ever again! But we screwed up.
We rejected this existence, choosing our own path. We thought we had a better plan. We wanted control. The results of this choice are disastrous. Death, pain, worry, sickness, frustration, anger, murder, rejection, war. All of these things are a result of our own choice. The restraint of time without eternity is our own fault. If we feel injustice, tyranny, frustration, we have to look no farther for the culprit than ourselves. As V says in the movie V for Vendetta(great movie): “How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be?” We were, and still are, afraid of this perfect existence that God has for us. Why? Because we have no control. We have to rest entirely on Him. And that is something we as humans cannot do easily.
Regardless, God has created us for a different purpose than that which we live for now. We were created for eternity, not this finite struggle, this rat race we run today. We are created with a purpose, and until we find and fulfill this purpose, we will struggle and groan against the burden God has given us. We must become aware of our burden, so we can cry for help, so we can be given a solution. We all have this burden. So what is the solution?
“I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”
– Ecclesiastes 3:12-13
“Now wait just a minute,” you say. “Just a second ago, this was the problem! THIS is the gift of God?!? To be happy, do good, eat, drink, and work? You’re telling me that I should be happy doing my same job, eating whatever got packed in my lunch this morning, whatever I come home to at night? THAT is where my significance comes from?!?” Well, yes. This is the gift of God. Nothing changes about this life. We still are in a finite existence, we still struggle. We cannot escape this until heaven. We do not, and we cannot, understand what God is doing in this existence. “God is under no obligation to satisfy your intellectual curiosity,” says Alistair Begg(from whom I have drawn many of these ideas. His sermon Eternity on My Mind is amazing and available for free at https://www.truthforlife.org/resources/sermon/eternity-my-mind/).
Begg tells a story of a train driver. He wakes up every morning and drives up and down the east coast on his Amtrak. Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, back to Philadelphia. He simply drives his train, every day. He reads this and thinks, “This is what the gift of God is? To drive my train, eat whatever my wife packed in my lunch? This sandwich, the diet cherry coke? And then back to work, then going home late and getting whatever food I have there? Only to wake up and do it over again? THIS is the gift of God?!? This is satisfaction? I don’t see it!!” Of course you don’t! There is nothing significant in this. Maybe the psychologists will tell you, “Oh, but he WANTS to drive the train, it brings him joy.” That’s bullox, if I can be British for a moment(hopefully that’s not a curse word or something horrible). The change comes when we change our perspective. It’s when we go from, “This is complete nothingness!!” to, “I’m driving a train. To the glory of God.”
It’s hard for me to relay this point correctly. This may sound very shallow. We switch our perspective. We accept that we will not be remembered. We accept our own finiteness. We understand that nothing on earth can fulfill us. After every graduation, every degree, every job, every relationship, every adventure, there is a feeling of flatness. We always think, “When I reach there, I will be fulfilled,” but we never are. Our fulfillment comes only from one place: God. We change our perspective when we move from seeing life as an assignment from God, as a gift. Not, “THIS is the gift of God?!?” But, “This is the gift of GOD?!?” When we see that this life is not about God abandoning us, not about our struggle to find fulfillment in Him somehow and our fight to get there. No. He has been there all the time. He has got us. He is watching us and helping us. “And we know that in ALL things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28, emphasis mine). God is working in us in all things. Every struggle has a purpose. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James1:2-3). Even Jesus had to learn this lesson. “Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). God works in ALL things.
This realization should bring us comfort. God loves me enough to care? The infinite God who created all the universe knows me? And is watching me? And has a plan for me? We should feel loved and extremely humble. We can rest in this knowledge. God is not far off. He is watching and guiding you even now. “being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). God does not leave His projects unfinished and He does not abandon His children. You are a part of His plan. We should find comfort in this.
Then why do I struggle? Why do I lie awake at night wondering what I’m doing with my life? Because life is hard. This is a rough life, and there are no easy answers. “How frustrating and so degrading/His time, we're wasting/As time will fly by and the sky will cry as light is fading/And he is waiting, oh so patiently/While we repeat the same routine as we will please comfortability/Please don't think about why you can't sleep in the evening/And please don't be afraid of what your soul is really thinking/Your soul knows good and evil, your soul knows both sides/And it's time you pick your battle, and I promise you this is mine” (Twenty-One Pilots, Isle of Flightless Birds). This is a secular band (for those of you unfamiliar with the beauty of TOP). Life will be awful. There will be deaths, goodbyes, and hard times. You will question God and yourself. But in it all, take comfort in the knowledge that God doesn’t abandon His children. If He is invested in the life of the sparrow, how much more profoundly invested is He in you? He is there, saying, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. And I want you to know, I make everything beautiful in my time. Just hold on. I’ve got you” (Alistair Begg). He loves you.
So do not find your significance in your job, your school, your family, your friends, your relationships, your belongings, or anything else. Only God can give you significance. So find significance in the fact that God has given you all these things to you as a gift for you to steward during your time here. This is not the end. There is a far, far kingdom that waits for you. And the King is coming back. He is growing you closer and closer to Him each day. Surrender your finiteness to Him. He will welcome you into His arms like a Father. He loves you and wants you. I could insert some great, meaningful song lyrics here to end, but I think that this simple truth is better:
God Loves You.