I Kings 3:7-15 We all know the opening sentence of Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, by now. “It’s not about you.” Oh, yes it is. It really is about you, and me isn’t it? Life, I mean, or at least the life that most of us live is about us. It’s about what we like and what we don’t like. It’s about what we want and don’t want. Itabout what we are convinced that we need and don’t need. It is about what we want to believe and not believe. It is about what fits our lifestyles and what doesn’t fit. It’s about where we spend our time and our money, and our effort and our energy. It is about what we value. The book is really inspiring and meaningful, and “It’s not about you.” is a nice sentiment and a lofty goal, but the truth is that for most of us, whatever “it” is, “it” is about us. And why shouldn’t it be about us? We work hard to achieve our goals, and to build a life that allows us a certain level of comfort and prosperity. We live in a tough and demanding world where there is no such thing as a free lunch, and this business of “deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me” for a pie in the sky, by-and-by reward in heaven is all well and good, but what about being rewarded for working hard and doing well in the here and now? What about living the good life now? We deserve a reward for our efforts, now, don’t we? So, let’s just be honest about it for a change. Let’s just quit making nice platitudes and lofty ideals about life and tell the truth. It is about us and what we value and there is no reason why we should feel bad about that. Aladdin’s Lamp—three wishes: What would you wish for? Would you wish for life to fall into place for you? Would you wish for wealth? For Mr. or Ms. Right? Would you wish for a job or career that would make you happy? For more well-behaved kids? Would you wish to get the life you want now? Think about it for a minute. Okay, so there is no such thing in your life or mine as Aladdin’s lamp or a genie, and we aren’t going to get three wishes. So, I’ve got to ask myself—and you might ask yourself—about the things that you would have wished for. Why don’t you and I have those things in our lives right now? Are they unattainable, ridiculous, or frivolous desires? Have you not been working hard enough for them? Do you not deserve them? I look around at all the people I know who work hard and postpone entire aspects of their lives so that they can get ahead and they don’t seem to be any happier than me or than the ones who just do enough to get by. And sometimes the ones that seem to least deserve it get the most material rewards. What is up with that? It’s frustrating, and annoying, and grossly unfair. I think that this is the problem. If life is really all about me, if getting the things and the rewards out of life that I really want is about me, then what am I doing wrong? If life is about me, then why am I not the person that I want to be? I’m not talking about the trivial parts of me like my looks or my weight, or the neurotic parts of me like my preoccupation with any negative comment that someone might say about me or what other people might think, or even the self absorbed part of me that is disappointed because I haven’t achieved some level of accomplishment or greatness at this time in my life. If life is all about me, then why am I so disappointed at the prospect that what I have achieved and experienced so far may be all that there is? Why do I have this nagging feeling that there must be more to my life than this, but I just can’t find it or make it happen? What is the problem? As a child, one of my favorite cartoon characters was Popeye the Sailor. For those of you who are too young to know about him, Popeye wasn’t a super hero, like most cartoon characters now, Popeye was a simple, sea faring, spinach eating, Olive Oyl loving, pipe smoking, sailor man who was also something of a philosopher. That is, that he had a handle on the problem of why people didn’t get what they wanted out of life. He used to say it often. I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam, I’m Popeye the Sailor Man. Toot, toot! This was his way of saying “there is no point in getting your hopes up,” “there is no point in expecting too much out of life,” there is little to no chance that I will ever be what “I Yam not.” This is my life and it is as good as it going to get. If life really is all about me, then I am what I am, and this is all that I ever will be so, no matter how limiting or disappointing that might be to you or to me or to both of us for that matter, that’s just the way it is. As far as I could tell, Popeye didn’t know anything about God, or at least he wasn’t a believer in much of anything except Spinach. And while spinach helped him defeat his enemies it didn’t do much for the quality of his life or relationships. So if it’s not about me, then what is it about? Well, of course, it’s about God and our relationship with God. This is church, after all, what else am I going to talk about? But the problem for most of us is that while we can honestly say that we believe in God, we don’t have clue as to what difference that does or should make in our lives. I believe in the crab nebula, and galaxies far, far away, but they have no direct impact that I know of on my life right now. And that’s the way that most people understand their relationship with God. Well, supposing God was to come and say to you, “I will grant you one wish. Tell me what you want me to do for you.” What would you ask for? Would it be the same thing or would it be different than you would ask Aladdin’s Genie? That happened, you know. It’s in the Bible. 1 Kings. It happened to Solomon. He was 12 years old when it happened. God came to him in a dream and asked him, “What do you want me to give you?” What would you say? What would you ask God for? Here’s what Solomon said: When he was 12 years old, his father, David, the 2nd king of Israel and a great king, died. Solomon became king, at 12 years old. So, as the story goes, God appears to Solomon in a dream, and says to him, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.” Imagine this, God, the creator and sustainer of all the universe, appears to you and says, “Ask me for whatever you want.” And Solomon, the 12 year old, says to God. “Oh God, I am just a child and I am so overwhelmed about being king, I am so ill-equipped to govern your people. What I want from you is the wisdom to care for your people. The wisdom to know right from wrong, and the wisdom to do your will as king.” He is 12 years old. Those of you with 12-year-olds and those who have had 12-year-olds, what would your kids have asked for? Here is the best part, the scripture translates into English that God was pleased. A better translation from the Hebrew is that God was thrilled, ecstatic, overjoyed by Solomon’s request. So God says to Solomon, “Kid you are amazing. You didn’t ask for money or power or fame, you asked for the wisdom to be the kind of king that I want you to be. Of course I will give you wisdom, but more than that. I will give you all the rest as well. And God did. Solomon’s reign as King of Israel was the greatest of any king in the world. He and the nation were richer, and more prosperous and more powerful and more famous than any king had ever been. It’s not about you or me. It’s about God and how we allow God to become a reality in our lives Another philosopher, not quite like Popeye, named Soren Kierkegaard once said this about the realization that God needed to be the center of his life, “I have spent most of my life determining who and what I am. And now, God, with your help, I shall finally become myself.” Not, “I yam what I yam, but “with your help” I shall become what you created me to be.” What did God create us to be? Loved, God created us to be loved and cherished and valued. It really is as simple as that. But we don’t seem to really understand what God’s love for us is all about. I’m not sure that we have much of a context for it. We know what our love is like, but it is really difficult to get a handle on what God’s love for us is like. This is not a direct correlation, but I think it might get at a part of what I am talking about. I have sort of reached that time in my life where sleeping through the night seldom happens, particularly if I have put very much liquid into my system before I go to bed. So, a few months ago, after getting up to take care of things, I returned to bed and lay back down and had the opportunity to just take a few moments to watch my wife Linda sleeping. I think often of how much I love her, but in that moment it was so abundantly clear that she is the most important person in my life. I was just overwhelmed by the realization of the depth of my love for her. Of how she has shaped who I am and how desperately I want to give her everything in life that will bring her happiness and joy and peace. I just was over whelmed by how much I love and cherish her and how blessed I am to be married to her. Then it occurred to me, that God must love and cherish us in somewhat the same way. It occurred to me that God must look at us and be filled with the same kind of overwhelming love and the same kind of desperate desire to fill our lives with joy and peace and give us all that will bring true happiness. And then I realized that regardless of how much God loves and cares for us, God can do little unless we open ourselves up to a real relationship with him. Have you ever thought about where we allow God, who loves and cherishes us that much, to be in our lives? Sunday mornings for an hour or two, prayer before meals, prayer during a crisis. Think about how much time allow for God in your life on a regular basis and the areas where God has much of an impact.. Have you ever thought about where God, who loves and cherishes us that much, wants to be in our lives? In the center. In the middle of everything. In the things we are proud of and happy about, in the things we are ashamed of and want to hide, in our money, in our jobs, in our relationships, in our learning, in our jokes, in anything and everything that you and I could ever imagine. That is where God wants to be and that is what God intended when we were created. That is where we were created for him to be. That is the nagging feeling that we get about life. There must be something more than this to it. There is, it is that inexhaustible desire of God’s to be at the center of our lives as the driving force that guides us. There is that incredible longing to be loved and accepted and then transformed by the presence of God. What would a life like that look like? What would it be like? About three years ago, I went on a mission trip to Guatemala with a medical mission team. It was my first experience there and the process for determining who would receive surgery that week was amazing. There were almost 300 candidates for surgery and the doctors could only choose about 75. So each person was evaluated and the most critical cases were chosen. As the people were coming into the clinic for evaluation I noticed a little girl who was maybe 12 or 13 years old. She was horribly deformed and was sitting and waiting patiently to be seen. A Guatemalan nurse came to her and asked if she was in pain, to which the girl replied, “no.” So the nurse asked, “Why do you look so sad?” The little girl answered, “Because I am so ugly.” The nurse knelt down beside her and took her hand and said, “You are the most beautiful little girl that God ever created, and God loves you so much that he sent these doctors all the way from the United States just to help heal your body, so that everyone will see how beautiful you really are.” Tears began to roll down the girl’s cheeks as the nurse continued to hold her hand. The little girl was Gabriella Diaz Lopez, who our church helped to bring to St. Petersburg for extensive surgery to repair her back and heart. She will graduate from high school next year, a healthy and beautiful young woman who hopes to be a teacher. Those of us who were involved in making her surgery possible did not accomplish any of it on our own. It wasn’t about us. It was about God working through us to give her the life that God wanted for her. Life is not about you, or about me. It’s about God and us and everyone that God calls us to share ourselves with. Let us pray. |