“Life is not measured by….”
Luke 12:15
Great question – just how are we to measure our life? By the next new thing we buy? By satisfying all the desires we have? By everyone in our life doing what we want them to do? If this is what life is all about, we need to get off the roller coaster.
Our God is a big picture God. He wants us to live big picture lives, as well as think about big picture things. By that I mean – God wants us to get our focus off ourselves, and our earthly life. Not ignore our life, but stop being obsessed with it. He wants us to bring into perspective how we began, as well as the great expanse of our eternity. Simply put, God does not want us to live simply for the moment. He does not want us to base our lives on whatever spontaneous thoughts, emotions, or needs grip us at any given time. In a moment, those things can “seem” more important and reliable than they really are. When we center our lives on what is happening to us and others, we can lose our happiness and contentment.
God wants us to live our lives in a way that connects our beginning with our eternity. God tells us in Psalm 139:16, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Obviously, God connects our beginning to our eternity – and we should do likewise. We will lose our stability and sense of direction when we get lost in the middle of God’s story for us. Our life right now is not the whole picture. It is only part of God’s eternal plan for us. The life we live in the present is not all there is.
God tells us in his word that we should not live for the treasures in any moment of our existence down here. “Do no lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19) Those treasures are not limited to material things. Perhaps one of the greatest earthly treasures we want to lay up is ease of life. Anything can become a treasure to us if we are not careful.
I recently came across one of those profound statements I wish that I would have originated. It is this: “If God has already granted you a place in eternity, then he has also granted you all the grace you need along the way or you’d never get there.” God wants to rescue us from our self-absorption, as well as our lack of eternal focus. We can do so by asking God to grant us his grace so that we can live with the height of eternity in view – even though we are down here for the time being. That is the way to measure life!
Darlene