It was a busy weekend for some subsets of American society.
If you’re a college football fan, you likely watched Miami and Indiana win their playoff games (Indiana “looks like it will never lose again,” according to one of my favorite sports commentators). If you’re a pro football fan (as many seem to be these days), you had five games to watch, including the Bears’ comeback for the ages Saturday night, with one more contest tonight. If you’re a movie and TV fan, you likely watched the Golden Globes last night, where One Battle After Another and Hamnet won their categories.
If you’re none of the above, you’re wondering if you should keep reading this morning.
I understand the question. While I watched every football game I mentioned, I have not seen even one of the movies or TV shows for which Golden Globes were awarded. As a result, I am avoiding reviews of last night’s ceremony this morning. Time is too short to spend it on what is irrelevant to me today.
This fact is more relevant to our souls than many people seem to know.
The “container” and its “contents”
The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr begins Falling Upward, his meditation on the spiritual life, this way:
There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong “container” or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold.
In this first “task,” we ask the essential questions, “What makes me significant?”, “How can I support myself?”, and “Who will go with me?” However, the “container” these questions help to define “is not an end in itself, but exists for the sake of our deeper and fuller life, which we largely do not know about ourselves.”
When we focus on the “container” but not the “contents,” over time, we inevitably resign ourselves to lives without meaning, or we fixate on means as ends and commit ourselves to aims unworthy of our divine purpose. But when we learn to focus on the purpose for which our lives are intended in what Rohr calls the “second half of life,” several positive consequences occur:
We have less and less need or interest in eliminating the negative or fearful, making again these old rash judgments, holding onto old hurts, or feeling any need to punish other people. Our superiority complexes have gradually departed in all directions. We do not fight these things anymore; they have just shown themselves too many times to be useless, ego-based, counterproductive, and often entirely wrong.
So, what is the purpose for which our lives and our time are best spent?
“When we know whose we are”
I learned recently that I am a direct descendant of two of the passengers on the Mayflower voyage to the New World in 1620. In fact, my great-grandfather (times ten) was apparently the last of these passengers to die.
In the moment I learned this about myself, I viscerally felt myself to be a person of greater historical significance. It was as though I became the child of a celebrity and thus a celebrity myself. Absolutely nothing tangible changed about my life: I didn’t suddenly become richer or wiser. But knowing whose I am, in this context, enhanced my sense of who I am.
Br. Geoffrey Tristam of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Boston claims that my impulse is more foundational and empowering than I thought: “When we know whose we are, we know who we are.” He points to Jesus’ baptism, commemorated yesterday by many Christian traditions, at which the Father proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).
Then he notes that Jesus’ subsequent temptations were “precisely about doubting and denying his true identity.” The first two began, “If you are the Son of God . . .” (Matthew 4:3, 5). The third similarly tempted Jesus to abandon his identity as God’s Son and worship Satan instead (v. 9).
According to Tristam, “It is only after he has gone through this inner struggle that he could emerge and begin his public ministry.” Through the rest of that ministry, Jesus never wavered from his identity as his Father’s Son. He sought his Father’s glory, prayed for his blessing, chose his will over his own, committed his spirit to him in death, returned to him in Paradise, and intercedes at his right hand today.
Now he wants to help us embrace his identity as our own.
From “son of thunder” to “apostle of love”
As you know, when we trust in Christ as our Lord, we become “children of God” (John 1:12). Now our Father wants his children to become like his Son.
As Paul explained, “The Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like [Christ] as we are changed into his glorious image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NLT). God’s purpose is to “sanctify you completely” so that “your whole spirit and soul and body [will] be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
However, we separate clergy from laity and thus believe (though we might not say it in words) that true godliness is for the professionals. This makes sense in other realms: professional golfers and musicians perform in ways we cannot, and so on.
But Jesus wants his entire church to be “holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). Our Father’s goal is that every one of us be “guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:8).
Why?
God’s purpose in making us like Christ is not just that we experience the “abundant” life he intends for us (John 10:10). It is also that we become catalysts for restoring humanity to him, salt and light in a decaying and dark world, witnesses whose words and works are so compelling that multitudes are drawn to him.
The Spirit transformed a fearful fisherman into a fearless evangelist (Acts 2). He made the church’s greatest persecutor into its greatest evangelist, missionary, and theologian (cf. 1 Timothy 1:15–16). He turned a “son of thunder” (Mark 3:17) into the “apostle of love” (cf. 1 John 4:7–12).
And people changed by Jesus into the character of Jesus changed the world. They still do.
For what purpose will you spend your time and life? With what “contents” will you fill your “container”? How will you express your identity as God’s child?
God’s Spirit will make us as much like God’s Son as we choose to be.
How much like Jesus do you want to be today?
Quote for the day:
“Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled him will rule us. It will cost everything that is not of God in us.” —Oswald Chambers
Our latest website resources:
Denison Forum
DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION 