From “Your Life is Not Boring,” by Jon Bloom, posted August 5, 2018 at: http://www.desiringgod.org
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Sometimes we need a good dose of reality therapy — a reminder that reality is far wilder and more wonderful than we often realize.
We have this strange tendency to take our own existence, others’ existence, and the world we live in for granted, as if these are just mundane facts. As if living on a giant sphere spinning at 1,000 miles per hour, while orbiting around a gargantuan fireball at about 67,000 miles per hour, in a solar system that’s traveling around the Milky Way at over 500,000 miles per hour, while the galaxy itself is hurtling through space at more than 1.3 million miles per hour is just sort of ho-hum. And the real exciting action is taking place on Facebook.
No, we need to pull our heads out of our virtual worlds of self-preoccupation and remember what’s real — what’s breathtakingly, gloriously real. Let me try to revive your memory by pointing out just a few astonishing things about you.
You’re Here!
First, you’re here. When was the last time you really thought about that? You’re here! And you’re here because God wants you here — regardless of the circumstances surrounding your birth, how much or little others have valued you, your abilities or disabilities, how sweetly other people have nurtured you or how terribly they have abused you, what kind of sinner you were or how long you were. You are here because God chose here and now for you.
You exist because God wanted you to exist (Acts 17:26–28). And as a Christian, God chose to make you his child in Christ. He began to love you as his own before the universe as we know it existed (Ephesians 1:3–6). And God is pursuing you with goodness and mercy every day of your life (Psalm 23:6) — yes, every day — and he will bless you exceeding abundantly beyond anything your remarkable but still relatively limited imagination has yet conceived (Ephesians 3:20).
That is your reality. Do you believe it? I mean, really? Not as a mere abstract theological fact, but as something that sometimes makes you catch your breath. Does it ever hit you that you are God’s idea and God’s creation — that he intended you to be?
There’s far more to your existence than lunch and soccer practice and Netflix and turning in that report and that broken relationship and the congressional elections and retirement savings and Abercrombie & Fitch. Yes, as Jesus said, your “life is more than food, and your body more than clothing” (Luke 12:23). So much more.
You Are Alive!
Now, let’s just think for a moment on the amazing truth that you have this thing called “life.” Where did you get your life? You got it from God (1 Corinthians 7:17). You are alive? Do you even understand what that means? No, you don’t — and neither do I.
No human being has been able to define exactly what life is; we just know that life is. Scientific definitions of what life is are really just descriptions of how living matter differs from nonliving matter and how living matter behaves. We might know a lot about what propagates life, sustains life, and ends life, but we can’t capture life’s very essence, that mysterious thing that is life. And that’s because all life comes from the Life (John 14:6), the one Great Existential Fact (Exodus 3:14).
Do you know how rare you are as a living being? Life in the physical, observable universe is very, very, very, very rare. And that’s a dramatic understatement. The conditions that must be met for life to exist are so restrictive that, far from it being likely that other intelligent beings exist in the cosmos, it is nothing short of a miracle that any life, not to mention intelligent life, exists anywhere.
And you — statistically speaking, you should not exist. Given the incalculable billions of sperm and ova combined with the incalculable billions of circumstantial twists and turns over the course of human history, any one of which could have resulted in you not being here at all, it’s nothing short of a miracle that you are. You, as a living being, are so rare, and as a statistical probability, so unlikely, we can scarcely begin to comprehend the marvel of your existence. You’re alive because, against all the obstacles and probabilities, God gave you life. (continued…)
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Luke 12:23 — (Jesus said), “Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.”
John 14:6 — (Jesus said), “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ”
Psalm 23:6 — Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
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Almighty God, in whom we live and move and have our being, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Grant us purity of heart and strength of purpose, that no selfish passion may hinder us from knowing your will, and no weakness from doing it; but that in your light we may see light clearly, and in your service we may find our perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
–St. Augustine (354-430)
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