Your two-fifths of a second

My church is semi-famous for making movies.  We're "that church" - the church that makes movies on a shoe-string budget that are professional enough to be distributed nationally and world-wide.  And my claim to fame, if it can be called that, is that I was in one of those movies.  Now, before you get all excited, please let me clarify that statement.  I was in the movie - sort of.  I was an extra - my screen time equaled the amount of time it took to walk past an open door.  I would say that it was roughly two-fifths of a second.  Maybe less.

Anyway, the point is, that I can by no means say that this movie was about me.  I had an incredibly brief role, hardly even noticeable.  Just imagine what people would say, if I had rented out an entire movie theater on opening day and then invited all of my friends to come see "my movie."  They would have laughed their heads off at me!  Anyone in their right minds would know that I cannot plausibly claim even remote ownership of this movie.

So why is it, then, that every single one of us has a tendency to do just that?  Consider the movie of life.  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  Then, when His creation rebelled against Him, it was God who flooded the earth.  Throughout the history recorded in the Bible, God uses people like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Mary, Joseph, and the prophets to fulfill His perfect plan.  Then, when humanity had thoroughly screwed everything up again, it was God's Son who came to save us one and for all.  And, at the end of the story, it will be God whom we will all be standing in front of, waiting for His judgement.

Do you see a pattern here?  So often we want to claim our lives as our own, insisting that we are the main actors.  But we are not.  This is God's story that we are living in.  He is the main character.  We are not even supporting characters.  We are brief extras, whose total screen time is similar to mine, roughly two-fifths of a second.  Does that throw life into a different light for you?  It surely does for me.  So often I waste the day, reassuring myself that I have plenty of time, that I can finish it tomorrow, that it doesn't matter if I waste time today.  But if I knew that I really had less than a second left, you can bet your life that I wouldn't be wasting mine!

In our heads, we all know that we are mortal.  We all know that we will eventually die.  But we don't really believe it.  We are not living in a way that shows that we believe it.  If we truly grasped the frailty of ours lives, we would live with such a fervor, such a passion, that people would stand back and stare and us in wonder, that they would constantly be asking us what our secret is.  Frederick Buechner writes that "Intellectually, we all know that we will die, but we do not really know it in the sense that the knowledge becomes a part of us.  We do not really know it in the sense of living as though it were true.  On the contrary, we tend to live as though our lives would go on forever."

Don't waste your 2/5 of a second.  Be a history maker; be a catalyst for change; take hold of your life.  Give God your everything, no matter how brief your time may be.  When your screen time ends, don't find yourself standing before the Almighty God having to explain to Him why you did not glorify Him with the time that He had given you.

James 4:13-17

 ¹³ Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

Where is your home?

I learned a lot at the retreat this past weekend, so please excuse me if several days' worth of blogging references the same event.  One of the main messages was centered around James 4 and John 17, in which we are called to be in the world but not of it.  This is a very hotly discussed issue within Christian circles.  What does that mean, exactly, to be in but not of it?  It's so easy to be either too far entrenched into the world, or far too disconnected from it - and both are dangerous places to be.  Where is that line?  How do you find the delicate balance that we have been called to find?

Living in Korea has offered me a unique perspective on what Jesus meant by saying this.  I am certainly living here - I have a home, I have a bike, I have friends, I know the transportation systems.  But I am also equally certainly not "of" Korea.  No matter how long I live here, no matter how fluent I become in Korean, no matter how well I get to know the city, I will always be a bit of an outsider.

So I've had the opportunity to really witness first-hand what it means to live somewhere, but not "fit in," per se.  I don't buy permanent furniture, I don't look for a nicer house, I'm not making plans to live here forever.  I still invest with others, I still work hard to make a fulfilling life for myself...but it's all done with the knowledge that this isn't my real home.  In the background, I'm always yearning for something else - home.  My real home.

C.S. Lewis said it beautifully when he said that "When I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."  Where is your home?  Are you comfortable and satisfied here?  Or do you long for something more?  Of course, He doesn't want you to go through life miserable or standoff-ish to the people He brings into your life.  But He also doesn't want you to get too comfortable or to accept too little.  God has created you for so much more.  

James 4:4-10

 ⁴ You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
   “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
 ⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Spiritual blessings

Ephesians 1:3 says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ."  When I look at my life, I am overwhelmed by the amount of physical blessings that I have.  I have an incredible life - family, friends, opportunities, and passion.  And then I think to myself...God's word says that this life is but a vapor (James 4:14).  So I can't help but wonder....if this physical life is so fleeting and ultimately insignificant in the grand scheme of things, then how much greater are His spiritual blessings that His physical ones!  That thought staggers my imagination.  Sometimes I can't imagine life getting any better.  But then I come to my senses and realize just how big, how unfathomable, how all-powerful God truly is.

I'm a C.S. Lewis nut, and I think that his series The Chronicles of Narnia illustrates this point very well.  Throughout the entire first seven books, the characters experience incredible adventures in some of the most amazing, beautiful places you could ever even conceive of, in a land called Narnia.  But then (spoiler warning!) in the last book the main characters die, and they go back to Narnia - but this time it's the REAL Narnia.  The colors are so much more vibrant, the scents so much sweeter, the sounds so much more beautiful than they were before.  C.S. Lewis was a strong Christian, and there are many who say that his representation of Narnia vs. the "real" Narnia is an illustration of earth and heaven.  So when you get a moment, stop and think.  Make a list of all of the physical blessings that God has so graciously given you.  And then praise Him all the more for the spiritual ones, which are so much more incredible than what we can see.