Finish the sentence: “My life would be better if…”
“…I were a Kardashian and had my own reality show.”
“…I could sing like Will.I.Am and tour with the Black Eyed Peas.”
“…I had married Suzy Q’s husband.”
“…I had that guy’s job.”
“…my church grew to 10,000 members by next month.”
“…Jay-Z and Beyonce called me and my wife every weekend to make brunch plans.”
Oh, you think just 'cuz a guy's a famous rapper he can't enjoy quiche and mimosas on a sunny Saturday morning?
There seems to always be something to fill in the blank- if you’d caught the right breaks, grown up in the right town, been born with thicker hair, everything would be perfect.
But perfection seems to keep slipping out of our grasp.
We see stories all the time from some of the fortunate few who have “arrived” or achieved their dreams, only to end up making the news for some crazy act of desperation and emptiness. They had everything most people dream of acquiring, and yet they end up even less fulfilled than before.
Something is seriously broken about that scenario…
It was supposed to fix you. It was the thing you’ve always known would make up for all the hardships and struggles you’ve had to overcome… and then it falls short. Completely, hopelessly short.
Someone asked me a question recently about sin- why Adam & Eve’s fruit feast made us bad people, and why, if we follow Jesus, do we still struggle with sin? I think the answer to that also answers the fallacy of the fill-in-the blank, and about our chase to get somewhere we’re never going to get.
We long for more because He has much more in store. We are surrounded by sin because without Jesus there can only be imperfection. Our pursuits feel so vain because we are empty without Him, desperate apart from His love, and void of life outside of His breath.
What we’re promised is that if we pursue Jesus, He will be our righteousness. If we reach for His perfection in our imperfection, He promises to make you right again. If we wrap our lives up in His life, something stops… You stop. I stop. The inadequacies that have plagued humanity… stop.
He had no sin, but he became sin for us so that He might stand at the end of all of our pursuits. No “if’s” about it- He stood in our place that we might know without a shadow of a doubt that our lives would be made better- would be set right, would be restored to all fullness only in Him.
“And in Christ you have been brought to fullness,” “in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God.” Colossians 2:10 & 12
