Kindergarten Career Day
There’s something so bittersweet about the 20-something phase of life. I still live in a dorm, eating campus food. Meanwhile, my friends are graduating, getting married, buying houses, and making something with their lives. I start to feel…stuck. Do you ever feel like that; like life is on two-times speed and you can’t seem to catch up?
That happened to me recently with the picture book I’m writing. Trying to illustrate, learn two languages, work part time, and finish my bachelor’s degree can be a full plate (and then some). Not to mention, trying to enjoy the 67 days of college life remaining. I can’t seem to make progress fast enough. At the encouragement of multiple professors, I decided to write a “Life Vision Statement” through which all my effort is filtered. It goes as follows:
“To work audaciously towards glorifying Christ in all things, with grit and the determination to always fall forward in growth.”
Not too shabby, eh? Your value isn’t determined by your output. We pressure ourselves to make ‘x’ number of dollars, participate in so many ministries, or to be somebody well-liked. But God doesn’t need us to reach a certain level of performance. In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25), the faithful servants produced in relation to their individual capacities. Our main purpose is to glorify God in all things; everything else falls into place subsequently. The greatest commandment is this: “…love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).
Now I see this 20-something phase of life like Kindergarten Career Day. Remember that? The day when all your classmates got dressed up as the careers they wanted to have when they grew up. (I dressed up as a teacher but that couldn’t have been more wrong!) The point is, I get the privilege to support my friends as they become the teachers, nurses, firefighters, and parents that they once imitated.
Photo Credit: pixabay.com
Kindergarten-Rebecca would be utterly awestruck at current-day Rebecca. We humans are so prone to forgetting the faithfulness of God’s plan for our lives that we get wrapped up in anxiety, constantly feeling insufficient. Proverbs 3:5-6 reads, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” That’s the beauty of our Heavenly Father: we ARE insufficient. But God, abounding in steadfast love, is all the more glorified in our weaknesses. As in the words of Paul, “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).