Tuesday, November 18, 2008

A Child of God

"Is it enough to be merely a child of God (nothing more, nothing less) and to know that this is the sum total meaning of our life?"

I wrote this question in a journal when I was in my late twenties and had met with many failures in my attempt to follow what I believed God wanted me to do with my life, to serve in the ministry.

And the answer that I wrote was this: "It was the purpose of our life to prove that this was so; to find for ourselves that this was the truth: that it is enough, in life, to be nothing more or less than a child of God."

We can pursue any good goal, faithfully. We can succeed, or fail, or persist and persist, over and over again, but none of that can diminish what we are as a child of God, and it can all play its part in our identity as a child of God.

I still think so. Oswald Chambers (in "My Utmost for His Highest", for March 4th) says: "Never consider whether you are of use; but ever consider that you are not your own, but His."
In 1 John 3:2 it says: "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (Revised Standard Version)