Don’t Tell Me It Doesn’t Matter

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Oh, when we are standing with Jesus you won’t even care why.

After the judgment He’ll wipe all our tears aways and what happened here on earth will all be forgotten.

Oh, when we get to glory that won’t even matter.

Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. If what happens here on this earth doesn’t matter then what are we doing? I don’t buy it.

I don’t know what we will do for all eternity, but there is more to what we do here on this earth with the life that we have been given than just what we will leave behind us when we are gone.

It matters.

When my sister-in-law was in her last days, I was sitting with her and we were talking and she was telling me about all the people who were coming to see her, and how far they were driving to do it… and she looked at me and smiled and said, “It matters. It matters.”

It matters when we make excuses instead of making moments.

It matters.

The  choices we make matter. The people we choose to invest in matter. The Lord knows when we are loving people and when we are using people to love ourselves. He can tell the difference.

He knows when you do what you do because You love Him and love others and when it’s because it benefits you. He knows.

He knows what is a real sacrifice and what we have made to look like a sacrifice or worse have convinced ourselves is a sacrifice so that we can pat our self-declared selfless selves on the back.

He knows when what we promote is His will or our own idea with a generic Jesus sticker on it.

I don’t want to be fake. I don’t want to DO church. I don’t want to do my vision and call it evangelism. I want to be real. I want to BE church. I want to be the body of my Jesus and continue His mission. I do not want to be guilty of USING His mission to be the provision and promotion of my own.

One thing I do not want to hear from my Lord on that day that I stand before Him, is I hope you enjoyed your earthly applause because you have received your reward in full (Matthew 6).

I’m not yet sure how God wants me to BE church. I’m not sure how He wants me to continue His mission. I just grab every opportunity that He gives me to teach and proclaim His truth. He said follow Me (John 21:22) and I am trying to do just that.

In the everyday and the mundane. In the work of the church and the heart of the home. In the joys and in the sorrows. In social media and in silent meditation.

I just don’t buy that it doesn’t matter. It matters. It ALL matters. What we do here on this earth matters… and I think it matters for more than just that crown we will lay at Jesus’ feet. There is more. I just don’t know what that more will be.

I just know that it matters when we stay silent and it matters when we speak.

It matters when we forgive and it matters when we think we have no reason to need to ask for forgiveness.

It matters when people are second and agendas are first.

It matters when we manipulate instead of communicate.

It matters that there are those I will never see the same again because of what I know.

God has gifted us with the command and ability to forgive by and through His grace not because we need nor have to forget, but because He knows that we never will.

I wish I could forget.

I was reminded Sunday through our Pastor’s message that God has the end. As much as my flesh would like to stand in what I would determine as righteous indignation I can’t trust myself. I can however trust Him. I either believe that He is indeed working all things together for good for those who love Him and are the called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28) or I don’t… and I choose to believe.

The enemy has stolen much from my family… but our Redeemer lives.

As I told a dear friend, I just pray that it isn’t wasted. I’ll keep breathing in His grace and breathing out His praise knowing that He was present for it all. His eyes saw what mine saw and what mine did not. I’ll leave it to Him to figure out all the rights and the wrongs and I’ll trust Him to do the healing in my heart and my memories. I’ll trust Him to take me deeper into Him as I walk through this place of hurt and unrest, this fissures of dissonance.

In the mean time I will follow Him.

Even if ,and especially when, I find myself in the valley of the gap…

Yet, what was expected was not experienced. John experienced the terrifying and abysmal emptiness that came in a Jesus who was free from his expectations and of his own assumptions.

Jesus acknowledged that his ministry would be disruptive, and even be misunderstood. In responding to John’s doubts, Jesus said, “Blessed is the one who keeps from stumbling over me” (Matthew 11:6). Like John before us, those who seek to follow Jesus often stumble over him. The gaps between what we believe and what we experience create fissures in faith into which many fall. Yet, as Cairns suggests, might mining those gaps uncover the treasure of encountering Jesus in new ways? Might mining the gaps we experience hold the treasure of new insight and the beauty of a more faithful devotion if we are willing to let go of “comfortable assumptions” and cherished expectations? If so, then might all the faithful dig deep and find that what is precious and most valuable is often found in the fissures of dissonance.

Margaret Manning Shull