On What Are You Basing Your Value, Your Hope, and Your Being?

One of the best features of the church I call home is the perpetually shifting hats I get to wear. Recently, the flu sidelined several of our families, effectively gutting the Sunday school. I teach the ladies, and since the mums were all home with their sick kids, I got to teach the only healthy child in the building: my oldest grandson.

He’s very keen to use the new Bible he got for Christmas–and to show off his reading proficiency, so we spent the entire class studying two verses:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Genesis 1:1

And…

“And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Colossians 1:17

We chuckled about how messy it would be if God suddenly STOPPED holding all things together!

And since then, in my more solitary pondering, I’ve brought Paul’s classic speech into the equation in which he addressed a group of philosophical dabblers with the reassurance that God was nearer to them than they imagined:

“In him we live and move and have our being…”

Acts 17:28

What Does It Mean to BE?

As I manage the effects of Parkinson’s Disease on the daily, quite honestly, there are moments when I struggle to recognize myself. “Motion is Lotion!” say the experts, so I do my exercises, my cardio workout, and trust God with the results. Even so, I wonder…

How is this diagnosis changing who I am?

What challenging circumstances are you navigating today that seem to have altered your life to the point where it’s unrecognizable?
Do you ever question your value because your productivity is “unacceptable?” (At least by your own standards…)

C.S. Lewis wove deeply helpful truth into his children’s fiction, and on the days when I’m living and moving, but wondering about my “being,” I call to mind this vignette from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The children are introduced to Ramandu, a sky-star who has retired to a Narnian island:

“Golly,” said Edmund under his breath. “He’s a retired star.”

Aren’t you a star any longer?” asked Lucy.

“I am a star at rest, my daughter,” answered Ramandu…

…

“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”

“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”

And in our world, we also have a way of reducing people to what they seem to be “made of.” The truth is that every single one of us (no matter how thoroughly converted we may be!) is made up of mixed motives, unfulfilled potential, and the effects of sin and the aging process. If you add to that whatever debilitating factors chronic conditions might be inflicting upon your mind and body, it’s tempting to dismiss yourself as a “huge ball of flaming gas” that amounts to nothing.

Let me reassure you that you are more than your graying hair, more than your slowing gait, more than your broken relationships. And lest you be afflicted with heresy from the plus side of the ledger, you are more than your career successes, more than your strong marriage, more than your thriving ministry. Whenever we base our value or center our hopes on anything other than Christ, we risk feeling like “a ball of gas,” because everything else is just too temporary, just too fragile to sustain our being.

Thanks be to God, there is larger and more compelling and comprehensive truth about you in Scripture:

• You live, move, and have your being in the presence of the God of the universe.
• You are being held together at this moment by the God who existed before all things and who made all things.
• Whatever burden, condition, or unpleasant circumstance weighing you down at this moment has been assigned to you by a loving God whose intentions toward you are only good all the time.

On the strength of this truth, we’re well-equipped to shine!

“And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above…”

Daniel 12:3

Holding you in the Light,

Whenever we base our value or center our hopes on anything other than Christ, we risk feeling like a ball of gas, because everything else is just too temporary, just too fragile to sustain our being.

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