Everything Belongs to Me
Last week I was chiding myself for being too serious. I need to lighten up, see the humor around me and laugh more often. I’ve been trying. Since that time, however, I have had to work through some very serious emotional issues related to some family matters. I feel a great deal of pain for a loved one and continue to try to figure out how I can simultaneously genuinely care about hurting people and find joy at the same time.
If I’m honest with myself, however, I have to admit that my “care” for others is often selfish. When the trouble others are going through affect me directly, then sometimes my seriousness has more to do with my concern for me than for them. Perhaps that’s the key (or at least part of the key) to my dilemma. It’s a good thing to be serious about hurting people, to feel their pain and their grief, to take necessary steps to aid them when possible. It’s also okay to be serious about my own hurting and pain. However, when the serious problems of others make my life unpleasant or miserable, I can choose to feel sorry for myself and wallow in serious self-pity, or I can learn to laugh at my predicament.
I am not a victim. I have the ability to find parts of my life amusing (or, at least, absurd). A passage from my morning devotion spoke to me this morning about this ability to chose how I think about myself. Paul begins 1 Corinthians by talking about the wisdom of the world and how it is foolishness to God. Conversely, the wisdom of God is foolishness to the world. The Corinthian church was embroiled in a serious debate over who was more important–Paul, Apollos, Peter, or Jesus. Paul says, that is foolishness. He goes on to talk about how God is at work building each of us in lots of different ways. The passage that struck me, however, is found at the end of the third chapter.
So don’t boast about following a particular human leader. for everything belongs to you–whether Paul or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life and death, or the present and the future. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. (1 Cor. 3:21-23)
It occurred to me that ultimately everything belongs to me. I have a choice I must make every day, and that choice is to belong to Christ. I have the choice of life or death. I have a choice about my present and my future. I can choose a life of seriousness that prevents the possibility of joy and laughter, or I can choose a life that allows for the possibility of joy in the midst of caring for others. For there to be more joy and less seriousness in my life, I must choose to begin that today, for my choices today will affect who I become in the future.
Often the paradoxes of the Bible confuse me. They seem foolish. But in that foolishness is the Godly wisdom of life that I want to embrace.
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