Sunday, June 22, 2008

All of Me

At the end of a school year, I find myself grateful for a time to focus again, to restate goals and hopes and dreams in light of the changing landscape of the past twelve months. So, last evening, in celebration of the beginning of summer, I intentionally carved some time for an end-of-the-school-year inventory. I started to physically list what I have spent time doing in the last year, what I have spent money on and what thoughts have occupied the life of my mind.

In a sense, these three resources of time, money and thoughts are really the only resources that I will ever have to spend in this life. What I do with the time, money and thoughts that have been entrusted to me while I walk this planet largely defines who I am, what I think is important and how, by the mercy of God, I envision my future.

The most interesting result of this process was actually somewhat unexpected to me. As I was pondering the ways that I have spent life's most important resources in the last year, the question that would not leave me was, "What does it mean, in consideration of all this, to say that I am a Christ-follower?"

Here I suffered conviction, because I had explicitly been thinking how I had spent my time, my money and my thoughts. And here I realized that one of the most fundamental choices that I need to make as I wake every day to follow Christ is that every resource that I have called mine is actually not mine.

What else does it mean "to give your life to Christ?" What else do I have to give of my life but time, money and the life of my mind?

Some things, I realized, have been given to Christ. But I think it is easy for me to give on a ten-percent model. It is too easy to be satisfied thinking that I have given Christ ten-percent of my time, ten-percent of my money, ten-percent of my thoughts.

But ten-percent of my life is certainly not my life. If I only give ten-percent of my life to Christ, I am still ninety-percent my own.

But I am not my own, I have been bought with a price, thereby I must glorify God with all of my time, all of my money and all of my thoughts (1 Corinthians 6:20). This is the challenge of the faith.