Character Over Circumstance
Time. Regardless of where you’re born, what socio-economic group you find yourself in, or how old you are, we are all constrained by time. It’s the mechanism that determines the flow of our days, seasons, and years. Through it all, the only place in all that time we’re able to live is right now.
When we’re hungry, we eat. When we’re tired, we sleep. What’s the next thing I need? Is a common thought that flits through our minds, and most of the time without us even knowing it. But at the end of our lives, we’re not going to be remembering all the times we were hungry or all the times we were tired. No, we will think back on how we lived our lives. We’ll consider the things that drove us to live the way that we did.
It's interesting how, when we’re in the middle of life, all we think about is the moment in front of us. Often times, it’s not until the end of our lives or when we experience a moment of impact that we take a step back and consider the bigger picture.
See, God is a provider who cares about us being fed and having shelter (Matthew 6:26-28). At the same time, He’s so much after our soul. It’s His main desire that we come to know Him and see ourselves for who we really are – created and loved by Him.
Jesus warns us in saying, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). He then continues in presenting the listeners with a parable about a rich man whose land was producing an abundance for him. He decided to tear down his vats to build bigger ones to hold all his crops and then he will be able to relax, eat, drink and be merry.
Jesus’ response to this man is this, “‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasures for himself and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:19b).
The moral of this story is not a charge against working hard, it’s a warning about what you’re working for. See, our character is far more important than our circumstances. The constraints of time and the natural way our body functions, in many ways, distracts us from the thing that matters the most – our allegiance to the Lord.
Our world is ripe with the fruit of distraction, tools to numb out, and pursuits that keep us asleep and unaware. This is what Jesus was after in His parable. This rich man gave his life to hard work, yes, but in service to storing up treasures here on earth. And before he was aware, his time was up, and everything he thought he had turned to nothing in the end.
Friend, who or what are living your life in service to? If the Lord called you home today, would you be looking expectantly for the treasures you stored up in heaven or would you regret the way in which you spent your time solely focused on yourself?
God is in the business of waking people up from their slumber. His tools of doing so are endless. But they often come in similar forms. The failure of a business, the loss of a relationship, the hard time you’re experiencing, may be the very way in which we snap out of our distracted way of life and turn our eyes back towards the Lord.
You and I have a decision to make – who or what are we going to follow in this life? It’s our default to find the easy way, get in line, and do what everyone else is doing – create the easiest circumstances for flourishing that we can. But God’s in it for something else – He’s after our souls and the development of our character. With that in mind, if it’s the way in which we wake up, we can see the hard and even disappointing things in life as the true providence of God’s goodness.
