Viewing Ourselves: So you think you're a super sized value meal do you?

So we now know that God has made us uniquely special. But should that fact cause arrogance? Should we consider ourselves all that AND a side of fries WITH a surprise toy inside PLUS a super-size drink.

Most certainly not! (I know, at least for me, I'm only the 99 cent cheeseburger with no onions. But at least I'm a SPECIAL order.) We must not become arrogant. Primarily because everything we are comes from God. But there is another reason. Although Christ would have died JUST for us, we must not think that He cares ONLY for us, that we somehow have a monopoly on His eternal and unbounded love.


1. God wants us to learn something from each person we meet. All those brought daily into our lives are destined relationships that have an eternal meaning. Those people that work with us and go to school with us and go to church with us are ordained by God to be there. They are not simply some chance assemblage of people. Of course, because of a person's sin nature, all can go horribly wrong. Their influence on us can be detrimental instead of Godly, and we may have to back away, both physically and emotionally.

But we must realize that each person is a beautiful creation of God, that we can learn from and teach both at the same time. We must constantly strive to learn some lesson from every individual whose paths we cross.


2. I find that I can never state ideas better than C.S. Lewis; so I won't attempt to:

"....to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ORDINARY people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations- these are mortal, and their life to ours is as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, exploit- immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind....which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sin in spite of which we love the sinner...."

Think about the person you like the least, or the person that annoys you the most. Do you realize that if that person dedicates all that they are to God, if that person gives themselves totally over to Him, they will become someone with more beauty and strength and love than you have ever met? Do you realize that they can be a saint of God? These people that we insult and manipulate and ignore are loved by an omnipotent God. These people Christ died for.

All day long we are helping those around us along their heavenly or hellish path. We are leading them more quickly towards their own destruction, or we are pushing them along towards their sainthood. We are giving them life or death, beauty or ugliness, hatred or love. There is no neutral. You ARE affecting those immortals which are in your life. We cannot sit on the sidelines in this game. We must play on one team or the other.

Are you a fountain of love and life and hope, quenching their parched spirit, or are you a toxic well, slowly poisoning those thirsty souls who stumble along your path?

May God help us to understand who we are in relation to others, and what they mean to both us, and to Him.

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