Rev. Elizabeth Moreau
Jul 25, 20193 min
For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.
2 Timothy 1:12
Recently, I had the privilege of listening to a young man’s
story, hearing the challenges he had faced and is now facing, and admit to
thinking he was coping with more than his fair share. No simple solution to any
of the complex circumstances was apparent. He asked me if God could work a
miracle, and if He could, then would He? Would God step in to resolve any of
the difficulties in his life, just one, not all? I had no way to answer that
question. How does one presume to know the mind of God for any particular
situation in the life of a particular person? God could be teaching a lesson or
purging sin, redirecting his life or sanctifying the man in his suffering. I
can listen and pray, but I don’t know how God will act or what He is
accomplishing.
As he talked, the words Paul wrote to Timothy came to mind.
More than once in life, I have prayed Paul’s word as a mantra to remind me to
trust. “I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to
guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.” As Paul waited for his
death in Rome, he was telling Timothy that, although he would die as a criminal
seditionist, the value of his life came not from that judgment but from the One
Paul believed. Paul trusted Jesus with his own life, not “just” whether he
lived on or was martyred, and not “merely” whether he would be received into
Christ’s eternal Kingdom after death, but with the value of the life Paul had
lived every day.
The world measures us in many ways. Indeed, we ourselves set
standards of success and failure for our lives. But Paul told Timothy that He
trusted the Lord with that. Paul’s success or failure in obedience to Christ,
in glorifying Christ, in proclaiming the Gospel – everything Paul did – was
entrusted to Christ to judge. Paul couldn’t see the meaning and purpose of his
life, even as the end drew near. That is huge when we stop to think about it.
What may seem to us like a failure or a dead-end or a pointless offering of our
days may just turn out to be what Jesus values the most. Really, how can one be
much more of a failure than being beheaded as a treasonous enemy of the state?
You and I do not have sufficient wisdom, vision, or love to
know the value of a life, not even our own. In Christ, there is no such thing
as a dead-end, no matter how hopeless or impossible a situation may appear. We
do not have the perspective of eternity, and we cannot guess what God will do
with the offering of ourselves that we make to Him, which is the only choice we
have to make. This day, will we entrust our priorities, actions, successes,
failures, reputations, losses – the worth of our very existence – to Jesus
Christ? Will we let Him guard the whole of ourselves until that day when we
meet Him face to face, and He shows us the true meaning and value of our lives?
In Christ –
Rev. Elizabeth Moreau
© 2019