For whatever reason I find beauty in utility. How well do things function and will they hold up under use and abuse? I tend to judge an object based on its ability to carry out its intended purpose and whether or not it does that in an effective and efficient manner. When I find something that performs well I usually place a high value on it. In short, I appreciate things that are well made, have multiple functions and will come through for me when I need them to. I have been this way from a young age and up to the present this habit has served me well.
This is all well and good, until I take an honest look at my own heart. You see, I can surround myself with “things” that perform well and come through for me. Items that essentially pay for themselves by carrying out their intended purpose or function time after time.
I however fall miserably short of this standard.
I often spend so much of my time trying to be useful to God. I want to perform well and have something to offer when the time comes. I feel the overwhelming need to be good enough or ready to be used by God. I want to strive to come through when I am needed and I seek to have a self-created value. I constantly gauge and value my worth on my utility. I run myself ragged trying to make sure that I have some shred of righteousness or intrinsic value to offer my Savior. As if there were something that God needed from me. Try as I might I can never escape the booming voice of Law as it does an impeccable job of showing me all the ways I miss the mark, do not measure up and continually fall short.
So what am I left with? If I have no self-created, “look what I did for you,” type of value to offer God then I need to face the stark reality that when it comes to God and his perfect Law I have exactly nothing to offer.
Herein lies one of the many beauties of Grace. It meets me at that point of utter emptiness where “the only thing I have to offer God for my salvation is the sin that makes it necessary. (Tchividjian)” Law shows me that I am nothing and I have nothing (intrinsic value); Grace then steps in and has its turn. It gently and repeatedly reminds me that all I need, in Christ I have (extrinsic value). “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8
So squad-mates, as we are all preparing for this upcoming adventure take a cue from me. Be careful not to try to determine the worth of your utility or prideful attempts at self righteousness before God. (I’ll let you in on a secret, it gets you nowhere) Rather, learn to rest in the beauty of your nothingness as it dissolves into the immeasurable Grace of God.
In closing I leave you with this poignant quote from Francis Spufford’s book Unapologetic. It is a good one to remember when we need to be reminded of all that we are not and all that God is.
“Just look at him. There’s something disgusting about him, don’t you think? Something that makes you squirm inside. He’s so pale and sickly-looking, with that dried blood round his mouth. He looks like a pedophile being led away by the police. He looks like something from under a rock; as if he doesn’t deserve the daylight. He’s a blot on the new day. Someone kicks him as he goes by, and whoops, down he goes, flat on his nose with the cross pinning him like a struggling insect. Jesus is a joke. He’s less a messiah, more a patch of something nasty on the pavement. And as he struggles on he recognizes every roaring, jeering face. He knows our names. He knows our histories.
And since, as well as being a weak man, he’s also the love that makes the world, to whom all times and places are equally present, he isn’t just feeling the anger and spite and unbearable self-disgust of this one crowd on this one Friday morning in Palestine; he’s turning his bruised face toward the whole human crowd, past and present and to come, and accepting everything we have to throw at him, everything we fear we deserve ourselves. The doors of his heart are wedged open wide, and in rushes the whole vile and roiling tide of cruelties and failures and secrets. Let me take that from you, he is saying. Give that to me instead. Let me carry it. Let me be to blame instead. I am big enough. I am wide enough. I am the father who longs for every last one of his children. I am the friend who will never leave you. I am the light behind the darkness. I am the shining your shame cannot extinguish. I am the ghost of love in the torture chamber. I am change and hope. I am the refining fire. I am the door where you thought there was only wall. I am what comes after deserving. I am the earth that drinks up the bloodstain. I am gift without cost. I am. I am. I am. Before the foundations of the world, I am.”
Until next time…
MB
