One of our new features here at Life in a House of Testosterone is what I call “Spiritual Sunday.” Spiritual Sunday is going to be about living your life and including your belief system in your daily life. Many people call themselves Christians, but once the church service is over on Sunday morning, they forget about their beliefs. It is as though religion is a box – something that you open on Sunday morning and then close again Sunday afternoon.
Now I am not saying that all Christians are like that, because I know that they are not. So please don’t think that. I have come across many, many people though in the past who do exactly that. In my own personal experiences though, I am so very, very pleased to see that discussing religion and your beliefs has become more common than it was 20 years ago.
How Do You Measure Your Worth?
So many times I find myself checking my blog statistics and measuring them against those bloggers that I admire and look up to. In my day-to-day life, I measure myself against my mother and my nana. Did I do this or that the way that they would have. Have I proven myself “worthy” of them each day? Did I make enough money working? Did I make enough new contacts? Did I raise my statistics at all?
I am constantly attempting to be better, be more than what I was yesterday, to be considered the one person to go to when you want to know this or that. Why? Why do we punish ourselves trying to be bigger, better than our neighbor? Why do we push ourselves to obtain that elusive promotion? The one that will take us away from all of the true value in our lives – our families, our friends, our very spirituality? Why don’t we focus more on our spiritual worth instead of our worldly worth?
This poem below was shared in one of the groups that I belong to, and it resonated with me.
One Solitary Life
He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in another obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty
He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never travelled more than two hundred miles
From the place where he was born
He did none of the things
Usually associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself
He was only thirty three
His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through the mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth
When he was dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend
Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind’s progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the parliaments that have ever sat
All the kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life
This man, Jesus, was a carpenter. He had no credentials, he never made a name for himself in his trade, he did not have wealth. He was just an average human who had friends who deceived him and turned their back on him, the only property he owned were the clothes that he wore. Yet no other life before or after him has had such a powerful affect on mankind as that one solitary life.
I’m not eloquent, I write from the heart, and sometimes what comes out is just a jumbled up mess that sometimes makes sense to everyone, and sometimes only makes sense to a few.
This touched my heart though, this simple poem about a solitary life of a man who has stood the test of time and is the center of so many lives. Why should I try and be more than he was? What will it get me? Fame and fortune on Earth? That means nothing in our Heavenly home.
Change How You Consider Your Worth
I plan to try and be more humble in the coming weeks, to mirror my own life after that of this simple carpenter. God created me to be who I am – me – not to be like anyone else on this earth. He created me to be unique, an original, and he has a plan JUST FOR ME.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” Psalm 139:13-16
I need not worry, about anything. God has a plan for my life – today, tomorrow, next year. He watches over me, He tends to my every need, even when I am unaware that He is working in my life.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life! What you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on! Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field; how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Matthew 6:25-34
God loves you – plain and simple. You are ALREADY worthy in his eyes. Stop attempting to be something you will never be, and be the person that God intended you to be. It will, quite literally, change your life.
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