Why You Don’t Have to Live a Remarkable Life
by LaRonda Schrock
The pressure to be remarkable is stealing our souls.
jjspring/Depositphotos.com
Have you ever wondered if you are fulfilling the purpose of God for your life? You know, that One Thing you were put on earth to do?
I imagine that presidents, pastors, and CEO’s are slightly more confident of their life purpose than the man who drives a trash collection route, or the woman who mops floors for a living. People in remarkable roles don’t often second guess themselves, because we have been conditioned to believe that in order to really live, we must be great in some way. We should all leave a mark. We should go out and happen to life, instead of letting it happen to us.
Is Living a Remarkable Life Bad?
I am torn between believing this pressure to be good, and knowing it to be bad. The pressure to be remarkable is tied intrinsically to our will to survive. And I am also a little terrified that someone will read this and feel exonerated in their laziness and lack of purpose. Life plans are good! Excelling in your profession or ministry can be a beautiful way to honor God, the giver of all good gifts.
But the pressure to be remarkable can also be a subtle subversion of Christ on the throne of my life.
I started recognizing the pressure to be remarkable in my own heart while I was on the “mission field”. While in Thailand, my constant need of God’s strength kept me pretty humble. But when God called me back to Ohio, I had to fight the sensation that I was stepping backward. Going back to a forty hour work week didn’t feel very holy. And I wanted to appear holy. Surely the next step should have been to move to Calcutta and live among slum children. But I now live in rural Ohio and am surrounded, not by those missionary go-getters who are out to save the world, but by “common” folk who are more than content not to own a passport.
Add to this the cacophony of social media. We’ve become a generation of people who hope that every moment of every day is something to write home about. That or at least post a photo of it on Instagram. Don’t get me wrong, there is so much beauty around us, and seeing it from another’s perspective encourages me to open my own eyes. But I’m afraid that the pressure to live remarkable lives can be directly linked to the amount of time we spend on Instagram or Facebook. We have So Much Access to the minutia of others’ lives. We are distracted and miserable and we don’t know why.
What We Get Wrong about Greatness
It has been dawning on me slowly that my restlessness is not because I am not saving the world in my nine-to-five job. It is not the mundaneness as much as the realization that when the frills were trimmed away and all that lay before me was normal (artless) life, I felt incomplete. My soul hadn’t desired God, who can be found as a helper in most occupations. My soul desired greatness. And there is a difference.
Could Christ be enough? Could I be content to live a quiet, unnoticed life in a rural corner of America? Can we trust Him to determine what our lives are going to amount to? We have a daily choice between contentment (not laziness) and a remarkable, self-centered life. And some days contentment feels a lot like dying.
Today’s great men and women (bloggers) of the faith are telling us that we must do hard things. We must live radical lives. We should mark our hands with X’s to help end slavery. We should sell most of our possessions and only own three t-shirts, or something like that. And mostly, they are right. But I got distracted in the kamikaze of hipster truth and the narcissism of social media. Christ is still the center of the universe. Not me.
You see, there is no hip substitute for dying to self. No cute way to carry our cross. No flattering angle to mourn for our sins. No easy way to put others first. No Instagram shot that will capture the depth of His love for us. There is no guarantee that we will be celebrities at the end of a well lived life. In fact, the message of Christ promises quite the opposite of all that. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” –John 12:24
So, does God call some of us to an easy life?
Does He have a grand purpose for some and common ones for others?
Is God ambivalent to our desire for remarkability and grandeur, consigning some to mediocre lives and saving the really good jobs for the ones who are willing to work for it?
Or could it be that all that matters far less to Him than it does to us?
Our Ultimate Purpose
Maybe His plan includes the ordinary right alongside the extraordinary, like street sweepers and company CEO’s exist on the same boulevard? Like Kings and Queens and the baristas who brew their coffee, or CEO’s and the pilots who fly their jets. Maybe His eyes do not measure importance in terms of annual income, but in whether or not our work is done for Him. I have no doubt heaven watches with equal pleasure the entrepreneur who donates millions to charity, and the maintenance man who prays as he mops floors.
“Whatever you do, work heartily for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” –Colossians 3:23 & 24
There is your purpose. The rest will come.
Do you feel this pressure to live a remarkable life? Leave a comment for LaRonda by clicking here.
*This post was originally published on asherwitmer.com
If you are impacted by my posts, you can show your support by becoming a Patron today.
