Keepin' Company

Recently I received a blessing I didn’t deserve.

I don’t deserve the good things that come to me. And this, of course is what all good Christians must say. We can never deserve what we get from God. We can never be good enough to be worth his sacrifice.

But I disagree.

Having recently been in the place were blessing was so outlandishly given to one so phenomenally undeserving, I felt something I had not felt in a long time. Typically in these situations, I feel guilty. I feel like I’m slime of the earth for putting God out. I feel like I don’t deserve to live.

Perhaps this reveals something about me. Perhaps I need a counselor.

But this time I felt something different. I have never seen “Saving Private Ryan”, but I hear that in the last scene, with Tom Hanks’ character dying and Private Ryan deeply distressed, Tom Hanks says to the young man, “Live, so as to make this worth it.”

Can I make the cross “worth it” to God? Can I become the kind of person that when God considers the cost, she says it’s worth it? When God considers the pain he endured on the cross and weighs it against the joy of having me in his company, does God rejoice? Or does she consider it was all for not when it comes to me? Am I the kind of person that would be good company to God? Am I the kind of person that would want to keep company with God?

I feel compelled to live this blessing so as to make it worth it to God to have given it. It’s not a matter of “earning it”. It is a matter of seeing what is better than yourself and being inspired. It is a friendly gesture by one who is “out of my league”. (Can he mean me?) It is a matter of thinking to yourself, “well, by God, if he thinks I would make a good friend, maybe I would…”

Goal for today: Become the kind of person that would make eternity more enjoyable for God.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 3/25/2004 09:11:00 AM