Whether you realize it or not
“What is God really doing in my life?”
“I should do more to show God to others somehow.”
There are moments or days or months (or years) when we feel like there’s no physical, tangible, touchable evidence of His presence in our lives. So we ask ourselves these questions, never feeling entirely good enough, always feeling like we’ve missed the mark somehow.
And yet, our feelings of inadequacy aren’t quite so intentionally voiced; it’s much more subtle than that. These kinds of thoughts usually slowly begin to creep into our consciousness, overtaking the way we view our lives and our living of them.
I’ve heard a lot of people over the years emphasize that Christians should be more defined by what they do rather than what they don’t do. That they should be known by the kind of love that’s actively expressed to others, rather than a list of “thou shalt nots.”
I am all for this mindset.
But I think that we can and should be defined by both; what we choose to do and what we choose not to do are testaments to God in our life.
Whenever we find patience or perseverance in ourselves that we didn’t have there before — this is God’s blessing poured out on us. And whenever we abstain from sin because we find that our desire to participate in certain activities has disappeared — it is by the grace of God.
Both are marks of the walk of faith.
Back in high school there was an incident where the police were over at my house. It was a small incident, but when the policewoman was questioning me, and when I told her more about my life and how this whole circumstance had arisen because of my mom’s emotional and mental instability, she eventually asked me this question that has stuck with me ever since:
“How did you turn out so well?”
Apparently from our short conversation, she was convinced that I should not be who I was; in some way or another, I should have been more broken than she found me to be. I’m sure she had seen it all, especially the dysfunction that is so easily passed from parent to child. And yet, she saw that it had not been passed to me.
I was able to respond with something along the lines of: “Because I have had a good life. I am blessed with many good things; I have my faith.”
To me, it didn’t feel like the things that I wasn’t doing were really that significant. Honestly, most of the things she might expect me to do were never legitimate pressures for me to begin with. And why is that? It is all because of the grace of God, so that “[we] will shine among them like stars in the sky.” (Philippians 2:15)
The irony of the situation is that this policewoman asked that question at a time when I was not feeling like God was very evident in my not-quite-so-picture-perfect life. Yet God was still being displayed in my life; He had clearly rescued me from darkness, when others may not have been surprised if I had been in it over my head.
So when God tells us that we will “shine among them like stars in the sky,” we may not even realize that we are shining. In faith we believe that we shine for Him, but it’s not always a bad thing if we don’t fully realize it. For we are not called to look at ourselves as stars, but to the Son, who shines the brightest of all.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Charlie Barker.
