One ...Life

What do you want to do with your life?
What is the meaning of life?
This is your life!

Life is quite an amazing thing. Most days I feel like it is a wonderful gift and then there are moments when it is complex and heavy. Life is filled with relationships that are enjoyable as well as a few relationships that are a stretch. Life is filled with sunrises to be enjoyed, smiles and laughter to be received like a gift. But it also has sickness, sin and death that are just around the corner.

I point out this reality not to make us depressed and believe that for every good there is an equal or even greater bad counterpart. I point this out to acknowledge my need for a perspective and a way of understanding that is beyond me. All of the human philosophies that I have encountered to deal with “life and death” or “good and evil” come up short. They ultimately lack any truth that transcends or even explains the reality that I find within me and all around me. Attempting to find the true meaning of life based on humanism, in my opinion, either ends up in a place of blind optimism with no foundation or on the other end of the spectrum, which is hopelessness that invites us to a life that bounces between nihilism and hedonism.

I find that for most of the people who want their life to matter, they are naturally driven toward some type of foundation to it all. People seek to have understanding, hope and significance. It is this “soul desire” that drives us in all kinds of directions. We seek adventures, accomplishments, accolades, money, pleasure and this list could just keep going. In the end many of these pursuits are at best fun and may even have potential for good, but they will not ultimately deliver our hearts' true desires. What we are really after, even if we do not articulate it, is to be at peace with our God and ourselves.

What I really need at the core of my being is to know my creator and through that knowledge, I can humbly and truthfully come to grips with who I am. It is an amazing thing to find that my significance, value and peace are found when I see how incapable I am of true life on my own. I was designed to “find myself” outside of myself. Another way of saying it is found in God’s Word, ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ (Acts 17.28)

We were created to enjoy life. At the heart of this joy of life is walking with and knowing God. The biblical revelation explains why the world is so complex and why it seems broken at times. The reason is that the world is broken! We broke it! But God is a God of restoration and redemption. The story of God’s Word is a story of New Life. Jesus brought that new and complete life to you today. In fact, not only is He the bringer of this gift but He actually is the ONE…LIFE that is capable filling your soul once and for all.

    But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were     dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.            (Ephesians 2.4-5)

Living in our One…Life,
Pastor Nick