Sources of Our Dis-Content Part 2: Over-Staying the Sell-By Date

Yesterday I posted about a common source of our discontent: living with our eyes fixed on the greener grass in the rear-view mirror.

Today I want to talk about a different source of our discontent: holding onto things that are supposed to be given away.

At the beginning of the week I got an invitation to speak somewhere. It was a generous offer to do something that is right up my alley. I was super-pumped to get the invite. Being the over-eager, impatient man that I am I wanted to cut out all the "let me think about it, pray about it, and talk it over with my wife" stuff and cut to the "yes" right on the spot.

But fortunately I've learned to restrain such impulses. And as I've talked it over with my wife, thought it over, and prayed about it, the Lord's brought this quote from George MacDonald up again and again:

"The will has been given to us that we....might have something to offer up to God."

Further reflection on this statement has found it to be most applicable to many areas of life. My mind has been given to me that I might have something to offer up to God. My imagination. My emotions.

Tease it out further: our relationships (spouse, kids, friends, parents, siblings) have been given to us that we might offer them back to the Lord. Our money. Our sex drives. Our homes. Our jobs. Our gifts and abilities and talents. Our challenges and adversities.

And my speaking invitation.

All of these things and more have been loaned out to me in order that I might give them back to God. It is much like the illustration C.S. Lewis (who, by the way, steals nearly everything from George MacDonald) gives in Mere Christianity:

When we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to his father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.

So I've been given an invitation that I am excited about in order that I might gladly give it back to my Father. And this doesn't make God any richer. It's just living into the reality of the situation.

I trust that the God who made me, loves me, and delights both in me and the people to whom I would speak has great gifts to give to me and to them. I am glad to entrust all of myself to the character of the good God who opens up opportunities for me in his timing for his purposes for my good and his glory.

All of this brings Him and me great joy.

And here, of course, is where our discontent comes in. When we cling to what we should give away, it rots. The "sell-by" date on all of God's gifts is basically immediate. The longer we imagine that something is ours to cling to as if it were an inalienable right, the more rancid it becomes.

Our gladness only comes in treating temporal and passing things as they deserve to be treated--that includes all that we typically refer to with the possessive pronoun "my" as in "my weekend" or "my life" or "my family" or "my career" or "my money."

And our gladness only comes as we treat things of infinite beauty and worth as they also deserve to be treated. To mistake the two and to join our lives with what is corruptible and destined to eventually die is to be joined to death, and so to die thousands of slow deaths ourselves on our way to each of our graves.

And conversely, as Lewis again says, if a person is united to God, what else can they do but live forever?