What is the most valuable commodity in the universe? There are as many opinions as there are people. Perhaps the best way to judge the value of something for a given person is to consider what they do. This is a far more reliable indicator than what they say. Each of us has resources. Some of us have a lot. Some of us have very little. But, for all of us, the universe of what we want is much bigger than the universe of what we have in terms of resources. This is a simple truth that every child learns before kindergarten. In spite of what the influencers tell us……..we cannot “have it all”.

And so we prioritize. Some things we pursue. Other things we let go. For each of us, at the top of the pyramid of our desires, there is one thing that we would trade everything else for. For each of us, that thing is the most valuable commodity in the universe. For each of us, that thing is our primary appetite.

A brief and incomplete list of candidates:

Career
Money
Prestige
Power
A big house
A nice car
Land
A rare collectible
Sex
Recreational drugs/alcohol…….addiction
Thrills

If you sort through the people that you have encountered, you can probably name someone who is pursuing something on this list. In my life, I have spent time pursuing several of these things……..not all of them……..but some.

Because of our limited resources and the reality of prioritization, there are things that we neglect in order to pursue our primary appetite. In my life, I went through a phase that I think of as my “empire building phase.” During this phase, I doggedly pursued some of the things at the top of the list. In the process, I didn’t take care of my family as well as I should have. From where I stand today at age 73, I can see that my primary appetite was misplaced. The “most valuable thing” was not on my list…….not even on my radar. I succeeded in my career. But, my family paid a price…….and so did I.

I am now convinced that the most valuable commodity in the universe……the thing that I failed to pursue for years………is love.

This should come as no surprise. Each of us is created in the image of God. Love is God’s defining characteristic. The need to love and be loved is written on our hearts. It was put there by our creator. Any time that we give some other appetite priority over love, we do harm. We harm others. We harm ourselves.

It is no accident that the core commands of the Bible and of Christianity deal with love:

Love God

Love everyone else

Even within the category of love, we must prioritize.

First….love God

Then……love everyone else

It is not hard to find, among Christians, someone who has given other ideas…….other commands……..priority over love.

But, the appetites of others are not my primary concern. I will deal with those appetites after I have perfected love in my life.

And I have a long way to go.

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Jesus summarizing Christianity in Mathew 22: 37-40, ESV

“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn it”

Hillel, the elder

I’m a pretty busy guy……for my age. I do a lot of things. I make things. This summer, I am learning how to make wooden buckets. For better or worse, I take some pride in what I have built, directly or indirectly, over the years. I say, “I did that.” We, mankind writ large, are busy too. We have built large cities. We have gone to the moon. For better or worse, we, too, are proud of what we have built. We tend to look at our surroundings with pride, and we say, “We did that.”

Today is beginning, as most of my days do, with some quiet time……time for prayer and meditation. BTW……I highly recommend it. It’s a little past 5 am. I am sitting on the back porch watching the day begin. There are trees: oak, walnut, sassafras, maple, and dozens more that I cannot even name. There is grass, a sky full of stars, a few patchy clouds, and more bugs, birds, and critters than I can count.

If I am being honest, I look out at all of this life unfolding before me and I realize something sobering:

I didn’t do that. You didn’t do that. We didn’t do that.

If I compiled a list of the most important and most treasured things in my world and wrote it down in two columns, the list might look like this:

“I did that”

My house and the stuff in it
My job
My hobbies

“I didn’t do that”

My wife
My sons
My granddaughters
The plants and animals in my yard
The sun, moon, and stars
The food I eat
The water I drink
The air I breathe

You get the point.

I exist in an amazing universe. The vast majority of this universe, the most important parts of it, are things that “I didn’t do”. At best, I am an innocent bystander. At worst, I am an interloper………a latecomer who has usurped a world that I did not create.

And yet, I am proud.

How do I reconcile my pride as a human being with a world, the largest and most important parts of which I did not create?

How do I deal with the column titled, “I didn’t do that.”

There are two possibilities:

This awesome world was created by someone else.

This awesome world just happened…….accidentally.

We cannot know with absolute certainty which of these possibilities is true. In either case, we have no justification for our pride. I have no justification for my pride.

But, there is another, more important, level to this dichotomy. This is the question of “who is in charge here.”

If there is an external creator, then it’s his world…..he is in charge.

If the universe just happened, accidentally, then there is nobody in charge. In practice, the world, which we call “our world,” is governed by a committee………a committee of 8 or 9 billion people, each with their own agenda.

And that is where human governance stands today. About half of us accept the concept of a creator, at least intellectually…….a creator who has expectations…….a creator who is in charge…….a creator who is sovereign. The other half accepts the concept of the “universal accident” and governance by committee. The result of this is that, we govern by committee. We may give the creationists seats on the committee. But, we are slowly, but surely, marginalizing them. We call this “separation of church and state”. This idea has become a pillar of global governance.

Creation has been effectively run out of our government. It is being run out of our schools. It is being run out of commerce. When was the last time you heard a Christmas carol or watched a Christmas themed show…….that had anything to do with Christ? I effect, our government, acting on our corporate behalf, has told our creator……”you have no place here”, ……..”we will run things as we see fit.”

This trend toward anti-creationism is a long-term trend. I do not see it reversing in the foreseeable future.

I wonder how God feels about it.

I wonder what God will do about it.

As for me…..I will enjoy the trees, grass and stars.

And I will remind myself:

I didn’t do that.

And I will praise the creator…….my creator…….the guy who actually did all of this.

In the beginning, God created…..

Genesis 1:1, ESV

This week, Cindy is dealing with the death of a lifelong friend. We are in our 70’s and this is getting to be a common experience. I am beginning to reflect on life……..my life…….and on what it means…….or in a few years……..what it meant. I am beginning to see that the most important metric of my life…….and yours is meaning. So……..what is “meaning?”

It turns out that the definition of a “meaningful life” is surprisingly hard to pin down. We go through our day working at hundreds of tasks, each of which has a short-term goal. But, these short-term goals do not determine the worth of our life. That is determined by the totality of our life. When we add it all up at the end, we want to have lived a meaningful life.

To explore meaning as it applies to our lives, I want to contrast two lives…….Solomon……..and Jesus.

Solomon

He was a son of King David and was himself king of Israel. He was arguably the most successful human being to ever live. He was the embodiment of wisdom. He had power. He had lots of stuff. He had hundreds of wives and thousands of children. He was respected the world over. People came from all over just to sit at his feet. But, when you look closely, you realize that every metric that he used to weigh the successes of his life was limited to the temporal/physical world. He was a Jew. He built the temple in Jerusalem. He believed in God. But, if you look closely…….he didn’t have much in the way of a relationship……..a conversation……with God. At the end of his life, he wrote a review assessing the quality of his life. That review is the book of Ecclesiastes. If Solomon had given his life a rating in “stars” at the end of Ecclesiastes………it would be a one-star review.

“meaningless…….a chasing after the wind”

Something here just doesn’t add up.

Jesus

He, too, was a descendant of David…….at least in the legal terms of the day. He spent most of his life as a tradesman. He studied the Torah. He accumulated nothing except what he carried on his person. He had no wife. He had no children. But he did have a following. By the metrics of the temporal/physical world, he was not a successful man. But, what he did have was an intimate, minute by minute, relationship with God……the father……his father. After his death, he returned to his father and became united with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. And there is the key difference between Jesus and Solomon. The meaningfulness of Jesus’s life flows out of his relationship with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. The meaningfulness of Jesus’s life is measured by the metrics of the spiritual realm.

So……how does this apply to me……..in my search for meaning in my life?

I can run my life using the metrics of Solomon. In point of fact…….I have. It’s been fun. I have stuff. But meaningfulness? When I breathe my last breath, will my temporal/physical successes translate into meaningfulness? I have grave doubts.

Or

I can try to run my life using the metrics of the spiritual realm:

Talk to God
Listen to the Father
Listen to the Holy Spirit
Serve God
Give God priority over my appetites
In a word……..love……..love God and everyone else

I am certain that if I can do these things, at least some of the time, I will be able to say to myself………as I breathe my last breath:

My life had meaning.

the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Everything is meaningless !”

Solomon, looking back at his temporal life, Ecclesiastes 12:7-8 NIV

God wants you……..with him……..in paradise……..forever.

When?

Only he knows…….Jesus didn’t know…….I certainly don’t.

Why?

Because he loves you with a parental love. He wants you to be safe, happy, and fulfilled. Not only that……like any parent……he wants to share those things with you.

How?

Now, we are getting down to the heart of the matter. God designed us in his image. There are parts of our nature that are a dim reflection of God’s nature. Parenthood is a great example. As parents, we want a strong relationship with our children. The basis of that parent child relationship is worth exploring.

There are three general foundations that a parent/child relationship can be built on………three foundations that our relationship with God can be built on:

Love:

This is intangible. At its heart, it is a loving relationship that is based on caring for, giving to, and sacrificing for the person you love. At its best, the giving in this relationship is a two-way street. This is the ideal. Every parent hopes for a relationship on this level with their child. A good parent gives…….and hopes that the love will be returned. A good child gives……..and hopes that the love will be returned. I believe that God wants this kind of relationship with me……with you. This was how God set up the Garden of Eden. This is what God had in mind for Adam and Eve. This is what God wants from you and me. This is God’s “plan A”.

Providence:

A providential relationship is an incomplete version of a loving relationship. A parent gives love and support to their child. The child appreciates the value of the gifts. The child recognizes his dependency on his parent. The child does the things that are necessary to maintain the relationship in order to get what they need. The relationship is purely transactional. There is love on the parental side……..but love is not the prime motivation on the child’s side. The parent misses out on the child’s love. The child misses out too……..not because she is not loved……..but because she fails to love. God is disappointed…….man is unfulfilled. This is God’s “plan B”

Punishment:

This is the bottom rung of the ladder. The parent still loves…… still provides. But, the child actively rejects the relationship. This is extraordinarily painful for the parent. I believe that God feels pain when one of his children rejects him. God feels pain when his sacrificial love is not reciprocated……..even worse when his child refuses to even recognize him. This brings up the problem……..of hell. Hell is God’s punishment for those who deny his existence…….for those who reject him. Hell is God replying to man’s rejection of God by returning the rejection. Hell is bad……..very bad. So…..what does this have to do with relationship? Once you are in hell, there is no relationship with God…….that boat has sailed. In terms of relationship, it is the threat of hell that is the issue. It is possible to have a relationship with God based primarily on the threat of hell. You can go to church, sing the songs, take communion, even tithe. But, if you shake the pastor’s hand and walk out satisfied that you have bought off hell for another week, you are missing out. Maybe this “plan C” will keep you out of hell. But, you are cheating yourself…….and you are cheating God out of a much richer relationship.

God may settle for “plan B” or “plan C”. But; God wants you to want “plan A”.

Theres no misery in not being loved,
only in not loving

Rod McKuen