Stay On Mission

The world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

“Um, what are you doing? That’s my left-handed, crepe-flipping spatula. You can have any other spatula in the drawer, but you can’t have that one.” I’d walked into the kitchen just as a family member was about to scurry away with my prized possession. I bestowed a kiss on my child’s forehead as I liberated my beloved spatula from their grasp and provided an ordinary one for their use.

Being left-handed in a right-handed world (only 10 percent of the population is left-handed) means I’m subtly inconvenienced much of the time. I don’t even recognize the inconvenience until I stumble upon a tool designed for a lefty. Upon discovering how much easier a left-handed version of a device makes a task, I’m always a bit flabbergasted at how different my daily experience is from that of my right-handed friends.

Instead of being annoyed that spiral notebooks, scissors, watches, guitars, and even the design on my favorite coffee mugs (among a million other things) are backward or awkward to use, I view it as a subtle reminder: this is not my home. This is merely a temporary dwelling place, a way station of sorts, and it should never feel too comfortable. It is so easy to trip headlong into the trap of accumulating possessions, wealth, and accomplishments. These things fade away into nothingness, just as this world will.

Why do we waste our lives chasing temporary pleasures? And what are we to do instead with our precious, blink-of-an-eye time here?

We are to do what pleases God. The two greatest commandments in Scripture (and perhaps the hardest when you unpack all of the ways they apply) can be paraphrased into four words: love God, love others (see Mark 12:28-32; Matthew 22:36-40). May the minor inconveniences in our daily lives remind us to whom we belong and to what we are called.

Julie

Today’s Act of Gratitude

Pick a constant, minor inconvenience as a continual reminder that you are a temporary resident of Earth called to live differently from the rest of the world. Give thanks to God for the better world that will be ours one day.