This life, this race, isn’t about me. It’s about Him.
The God of the universe, the Lord Almighty, created the heavens and earth when He Himself would have been more than enough. He composed songs of galaxies, planets, and heavenly realms. He made this life-sustaining, wonder-containing, beautiful earth, and then created mankind- including me- in His image. He placed us as stewards over creation. Even when we rebelled, He who created the most infinitely small detail of the smallest seed and nerve cell still wanted a relationship with ME. He wants it so badly that instead of destroying all of fallen creation, including myself, after we spit His gifts and His relationship with us in His face, He whom the highest heavens cannot contain confined Himself to a human body. He lived out and fulfilled His own holy law for 33 years, not faltering into rebellion even once, dying to Himself every millisecond. He allowed Himself to be bound, tortured, and killed in the most heinous, malevolent, painful, defacing, and humiliating way possible. He was abandoned by His closest friends and Father. Naked with the skin ripped off His back. In anguish that human words cannot even begin to express. He was the innocent who died in place of the truly guilty. And then, He rose again to life.
All of this so He could restore each one of us back together with Him forever. In this new life we have the pleasure of Him working through us to bring about this restoration to all creation. Ho. Ly. Cow. Because He defied and defeated death itself, we can be raised with Him. All of us. Yet what are we that the Lord Almighty should give a flying crap? He who brought me to fricking Guatemala! Who do I think I am to insist on comfort when the vast majority of the rest of His children live in poverty? To try to do things out of my own strength. Apart from Him, I can do nothing. And how dare I not trust His leading or disobey or claim entitlement to something that isn’t mine! Or refuse to serve when He gives me the opportunity. His strength gives me courage to continue even when I don’t feel like it or when days are hard. And it’s worth it.
