This is true joy in life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
~George Bernard Shaw
“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another… If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of My name, because they do not know Him who sent Me.
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, in John 15
Oh beloved, it is true.
Each of us is convinced of our own importance. But, have we ever considered that the importance that He places on our lives is much bigger than our thoughts of what importance is?
What if His plans for us, are to help bring about a crop, by fertilizing the soil?
What if His thoughts are for us to be used up in a purpose we cannot yet see?
What is He chooses to spend us as a pawn, that the queen can make a large move?
What if our dreams are to die, that many others’ are brought to fruition?
What if we actually took seriously our Beloved Friend’s Words?
Can we see it?
Jesus, throughout His words in the gospels, speaks of a Kingdom which has no end. Actually, He spoke about this a lot (like over 100 times in the four gospels). And what drives this Kingdom is not domination – it is submission.
What kind of submission? We, each of us, including this fool of a writer, are not too inclined to lean towards this kind of thing. Oh, we obey, but to submit is something deeper. Submission is to subjugate our mission to someone else.
How much submission?
To the death.
Death of our dreams.
Death of our careers.
Death of our hope in this world.
Death of the very most difficult enemy: me.
But, the passage above is so clear, that it stings the soul when we read it right. Our lives – when Truly Lived – are sub-missioned to the lives of people around us. For, it is only in giving everything away, that many around us can grow.
Oh yes, hopefully, many of the people who we sacrificed for – and for whom we are sacrificed – will learn the incredible, hyperbolic math of the Kingdom. And this math is the beauty of the untold millions who might come from a single seed.
So, yeah, this entry is a little mystical. However, i do hope the point is clear. Do you Love Him? Do you Love the people around you? Are you willing to see that it might just take your submission to all sorts of really tough stuff in order for many around you to be glorified and made strong in their missions?
Oh beloved, it might just be time to die. And literally is the least painful sense here. The deeper pain is the little deaths we need to die each moment, that others might live.
If we were not passionately inclined to money or to vainglory, then we would not fear death or poverty. We would not know enmity or hatred, and we would not suffer from the sorrows of ourselves or others.
~St. John Chrysostom
