What About Me?

What About Me?

“…there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.  But before all this happens, men will seize you and persecute you; they will hand you over to the synagogues and to imprisonment, and bring you before kings and governors because of my name - and that will be your opportunity to bear witness.” (LK 21:11-3)

         Calvary is only days away.  Jesus already told his disciples he is about to die.  Now, instead of giving them a pep talk, he tells them about the fearful and terrible things to come, and how they will suffer for knowing him.   Not only that, but they are to see this as an opportunity to bear witness!  How could they have received his Word?

         There is a radio commercial that so irritates me I find myself turning the channel until it’s over.  This guy keeps repeating, that at his business, “It’s all about you.”  Who actually believes that?!  But the deeper question is how many of us want to believe that.  And the sobering answer is we all do.  

         Deep in our soul, at the core of our untamed flesh, lives the delusion that we are the center of the universe, and it will remain there -resisting Truth till we draw our last breath.  It is why foolish commercials work, why sin can rise from its ashes to humiliate our love for God, why we need a Savior.

         As a young child in religion class, I was challenged with the most fundamental question of life –Why did God make us?  It was well within the childish capacity of my mind to learn the simple answer –God made us to know, love and serve him.  Yet a half century later, my soul is still learning to unwrap this Defining Truth.

         To the soul deceived by the Father of Lies, this Other-Centered belief is foolish if not reviling.  To the soul penetrated by the Light of the Father of Love, this belief is the beginning and end of Life –that we exist to know, love and serve God is glorious privilege.

         It is only in possessing this Life Defining Truth that we can receive these Words of Jesus with joy –that we can embrace the suffering of knowing him and, in so doing, give witness to the God who gives us Life.  In being freed from the selfishness of our inner child, we are freed from the need to serve our Insatiable Self –we are freed to serve the God who created us.  In all ways, serving God is loving and Love is the Preeminent Witness -for God is Love.

         As a toddler wanders into the path of a car, the mother does not stop to consider ‘What about me?’ before scooping up her child.  Love does not count the cost to Self –‘What about me?’ is absent from the vocabulary of Love.  To lay down one’s life is to give Witness to our Savior’s Death.  Life is not at all “all about us” -it is all about his Sacrificial Love for us.

         Father, you gave your Son into suffering and death -that I might live.  Jesus, you did not count the cost to free me from Sin.  Holy Spirit, possess me -that I may give Witness to your Sacrificial Love.