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We all like to be appreciated, and many of us get a great deal of
satisfaction out of our work. We also enjoy the added financial
compensation that accompanies job advancement. But in today's complex
and changing technological society, the time comes all too soon when,
for many, the progress stops. A man discovers that he's as skilled as
he ever will be at his job. He may be only in his forties, but he
starts seeing newly trained younger people passing him by. Worse
still, his job may be phased out and he can find no other place where
his training helps him to get a job.
When the half-century mark nears, many people
who hold respectable jobs and provide well for their families start
feeling like failures. "All I've ever done is sell cars! When my
working days are over, what have I really accomplished?"
People who take life with some degree of
serious thought--whether unskilled laborers, skilled technicians,
professionals, or executives--reach the point at which the glamour,
idealism, and expectation of youth are replaced by solemn
self-evaluation. That is why a skilled 52-year-old surgeon in a
television interview said that he is trying to have some fun now
because he receives little satisfaction or fulfillment in his work.
All he has done is to slightly postpone the inevitable.
A man who had reached the top in three fairly
large companies said that his success is not giving him much
pleasure. At the other end of the spectrum are the middle-aged and
elderly who feel they are complete failures because they never made a
lot of money or accomplished anything great by human standards.
The "successful but unsatisfied" and
the "unsuccessful and frustrated" need to see that our real
worth is not in how much we have accumulated nor how much we have
accomplished. Young men and women must be aware of two dangerous
"dragons"--activism and materialism. Activism says,
"You are what you have accomplished." Materialism says,
"You are what you have acquired or accumulated." Both
activism and materialism produce misery and destroy lives.
The Bible shows that our worth in God's eyes
has nothing to do with how successful we are by this world's standard
or how much we have accumulated. Our worth is found in the fact that
God created us in His image and gave us the authority to rule over
the earth as His representatives (Gen. 1:27-30; Ps. 8). Therefore,
every one of us possesses a unique dignity and authority on the
earth.
Sin prevented us from accomplishing all that
God created us for, but He did not abandon us. Way back in eternity,
He determined that at the proper time the Second Person of the
Trinity would become a member of the human race, live without sin,
take our punishment by dying on a cross (John 3:16; 2 Cor. 5:21), and
rise from death (1 Cor. 15:25-58). Every believer has been chosen by
God to be the recipient of forgiveness and eternal life (Eph. 1:3-6).
This is what gives us tremendous value in God's sight.
Since believers will someday be on display
before the angels and all other intelligent beings as the objects of
God's love and grace (Eph. 2:6-7; 3:10-11), we can be assured that we
are all significant--either in life or in death.
This thought is expressed beautifully in Psalm
116:15, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His
saints." The Hebrew word translated "precious"
sometimes means "valuable" (the "precious stones"
in 2 Samuel 12:30 were jewels), but it also means
"costly"--that which has cost pain or toil, as in Proverbs
12:27. Since the psalmist is praising God for delivering him from
death, the idea of "costly" better fits the context. The
death of a devout believer is costly to God because He loses for
earthly service a person He chose from eternity, forgave through the
death of the Son, changed through the new birth, and equipped through
the gift of the indwelling Spirit. That's why God does not lightly
let His children die.
What we need to remember is that He who sees
the fall of a sparrow as significant (Matt. 10:29-31) shares the pain
we and all of our loved ones feel. He highly values you and me. And
the value He places on us has nothing to do with how rich or famous
we are.
Curtis
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