“Those who turn many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever.” Daniel 12:3 NKJV
“Who, and how many, will be in Heaven forever because you lived on earth awhile?”
My thoughts today are about “a life that matters.”
Everyone desires for their life to count for something worthwhile and enduring. We know well that one’s lifetime is limited, however few or many years you are given. No one wants the end of their life to be the end of their memory. People want to leave something that marks their passage here and some noteworthy contribution they made in their lifetime.
Some give themselves to gathering things – possessions, property, and wealth, ultimately to be left to family or endowments. Others apply their time and talents to achievements in art, poetry, literature, or architecture. Some sell their years for celebrity and renown – to be thought important. In reality, every one of us is trading the currency of our lives for something that we think matters, but not everything matters.
That’s something that I am learning. A few weeks ago, when I was talking about something (well, ranting might be more honest), my gracious wife gently said, “Sometimes you let things matter a little too much.” My rebuttal was my honestly believed defense that things matter to me because I care. But in my heart I knew she was right. Days later I came across something I had written several years earlier, “Not everything matters, and everything that does matter does not matter equally.”
I think that is what you are meant to discover in your journey – separating those things that should matter, and selectively giving your heart and time according to how much they matter individually in the overall scheme of things. To do that successfully you have to first identify and lay aside those lesser things that really matter little or not at all.
I think this principle is illustrated in the writings of Paul. Read 1 Corinthians 3:9-16 NIV. “If any man builds on this foundation (which is Christ) using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw . . the fire will test the quality of each man’s work.” vs.10-11. Paul is instructing the Corinthian Christians as to the things that matter, having intrinsic value – gold, silver, and costly stones. They each matter, yet they do not matter equally; their value varies but each possesses clear and undisputed value.
Paul uses this metaphor for a life that is invested in what truly matters, now and eternally. I am not sure that any one of us is clever enough to always know what has real and lasting value at the moment. I was older than I wished I had been before I more fully understood the incomparable value of our marriage and children, and the matchless privilege of ministry. Choose to invest your life in people – family and friends, and ministry to others in His Name. That’s where the richest dividends of service and satisfaction lay.
Yet the Bible also warns there will be a day that plainly – maybe painfully – exposes the times and ways you and I spent irreplaceable time and valuable resource on stuff that matters not at all. vs. 13-15. How sad at the end of one’s life to be left with only “wood, hay and straw.” The way your life will “shine like the stars forever” is to live each day with clear objective in such a way as to “turn many to righteousness.” Who, and how many, will be in Heaven forever because you lived on earth awhile? “As children of God in a dark world . . let your lives shine brightly before them.” Philippians 2:15 NLT.
My prayer for you today is: know what truly matters and give yourself completely to that.