Your Life Matters

–I didn’t go on our church’s mission trip to Mexico

–I’m not writing a book

–I’m not sending money to help build an orphanage in Haiti

–I’m not volunteering for Operation Christmas Child

–I’m not taking food to the homeless

–I’m not spending time at a non-profit . . .

So, does my life, the one not doing any of the above great things, does my life matter to God? Am I making a difference in the Kingdom?

Frederick Buechner writes:

“Whatever you do with your life—whatever you end up achieving or not achieving—the great gift you have in you to give to the world is the gift of who you alone are; your way of seeing things, and saying things, and doing things, and feeling about things, that is like nobody else’s. If so much as a single one of you were missing, there would be an empty place at the great feast of life that nobody else in all creation could fill.”

If so much as a single one of us were missing, there would be an empty place at God’s great feast of life that nobody else could fill.

Not a single one of us can be missing.

Our lives matter.

This is the life God has given you to live:

These children are your children to nurture and raise.

This man is your husband to respect and love.

These parents are your parents to honor and care for.

This job is your job to work at with honesty and faithfulness.

This city is your city to embrace and settle in.

This home is your home to appreciate and manage.

These friends are your friends to spend time with and encourage.

This church is your church to attend and serve.

And there will be emptiness in each of these places if you believe your life doesn’t matter. You are God’s plan for this family, these people, these places, this church.

“For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus

to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

– Ephesians 2:10

Our life, our story, our good works – God prepared it all in advance for us to do.

Regardless of how minor the role feels, or how small the work is, or how ineptly we think we are doing what we’re doing, we are and will continue to be God’s workmanship doing the good works we were created to do, serving the people we were created to serve.

I am a middle school substitute teacher. I teach Sunday school at our church. I lead bible studies. I mentor young women and talk Jesus with them. I blog and I speak. All roles and jobs that, at times, feel minor and small and insignificant.

It’s not Haiti and it’s not Mexico and it’s not saving the poor in our city.

But could it be that I make a Kingdom difference each time I walk into a classroom speaking love and mercy to muddled middleschoolers? Or when I enter the choir room where our small Sunday school meets and hug and clap wildly for each child? Or every time I sit at my computer and tell a bit of my story, or share a cup of coffee with a woman who needs encouragement in her marriage, in her faith, in her life?

Our lives matter.

Whether we are caring for—

parents, preschoolers, or patients . . .

husbands, housework or the hurting . . .

middleschoolers, mutts, or the mentally ill . . .

• We have no idea what influence and impact our living the life we’ve been given will have on our sphere of influence and the generations to come.
• We have no idea how our small, simple, daily lives point others to the King of Kings and eternity.

And someday, in heaven, God will pull back the veil and we will whisper together, Look at what we did!”

Yes, beloved, look at what you did.