As I stare at the blank page in front of me, sometimes I see the potential, sometimes I feel overwhelmed with the lack of words that are coming to me. Sometimes we feel we are a blank page with nothing to offer anyone. Sometimes we feel we are a completed document with our lives written or everything planned out. The good news is we are neither of those things. We have the gifts God has given us, even when we do not know what they are. Our lives are not a finished product, and we can never plan everything out, but God has already seen every moment of our lives. From the beginning to the end. He loved us from the moment our lives began, and He will always be with us until the very end, and beyond if we have given our lives to Him. We are not a completed document because He is still working on us. Every moment we have the option to follow Him or go our own way. Thankfully, the document of our lives is not written in stone. When we make mistakes, we can choose to dig our heels in and insist we are right or we can realize our error and apologize and make amends.
Some people hesitate to put a title on the document of their lives because they don’t know their purpose or they don’t want to be “stuck in a rut.” Some people put a title on the document in permanent, bold marker, saying, “This is who I am. You’ll just have to accept me the way I am because I’m not changing.” The young man in Matthew 6:16-22 was one of those people. He knew who he was and didn’t want to change. Even though he asked Jesus what he could do to get eternal life, he didn’t actually want to change anything he was already doing. He probably started getting excited when Jesus listed commandments he thought he already followed. Then Jesus told him to sell all of his possessions and give to the poor. That was too much for him, so he went away disappointed. We want to do the right thing, but we don’t want that thing to be too much work or too difficult. We look at other people and see what they have been asked to do, and we think, “That’s way easier than what You’re asking me to do, Lord!” Jesus knew exactly what would be difficult for the young man, and He asked him to do it anyway.
What is God asking you to do? Do you think it is way too difficult, so you have been pretending that it isn’t something He really wants you to do? Is it something quite simple, but you’re still putting it off? We need to ask ourselves every day what is most important to us. Do we want to be God’s hands and feet? If we do, we better be listening to what He wants us to do and then actually doing it.
Sometimes we need to take things one step at a time. Are we complaining? That needs to stop. Are we insisting on our own way? That needs to stop. Are we discontent with the life God has given us? That needs to stop. We need to work on the sin in our own lives, so we can hear God when He speaks to us and so we can more effectively share His Good News. The young man held his money very close and very dear, so Jesus asked him to give it up. If we are holding something closer to ourselves than God, we need to give it to God. We need to follow the disciples’ examples and drop what we’re doing and follow Him.
