I have a working theory that this experiment we title Life is meant to test two things.
God, in His best wisdom, I believe wants to see how two ideas develop over time. The First: How people will interact with Him. He desires to see how we, humans with free will, interact and trust in a God that has created all things for us, and is always there for us to communicate with. The Second: How people will interact with each other.
Now, I could list several variant details like how we together interact with God, or how we act with ourselves. But as the theory has been developed for me so far, the two of most important are God and people. The others are a sense of style, sought out by self and expectedly in very different ways.
So, I assume the easy part is first identifying that. Now for the second step of this grand experiment—living in the invisible glass beakers of God’s design. Seeing how testing me will influence these two results. I envision something like God being this stocky old man, hovered over a set of test tubes in a brilliant white lab coat and thick goggle glasses. Just me? Okay. Let’s proceed.
So, here I sit in Cincinnati for the week. At the moment, combing through Craigslist and online job searches in hopes that I find the funds to pay for next month’s rent… and food… so on and so on. My desire is always to live most in line with the purpose I believe I am created for. However, God doesn’t always give me the desire right away. He’s not finished testing. To simply give me the answer would not do the justice of truly finding what I’m made of. I believe I am full of passion, life, longsuffering, and above all greatness… So the experimenting continues.
But purpose and life, I’m finding, is only part of the experiment. The other is love. Love for someone else. Love for Him. Love. Enter experiment number two. So, God puts me in positions of humility in life, so that when He gives me the heart of someone, or the mind to build some great community or whatever is meant to be—I’ll be ready. I will have postulated in my own head how everything is supposed to work, then God will prove me wrong enough times that I admit I know absolutely nothing, other than I am nothing without Him.
A creation is only as great as its Creator.
Matthew observes the scene of Jesus gathered in public at the Temple courtyard. He is preaching when, in act to try and ruin Christ’s theology, one Pharisee asks, “Teacher. Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Christ responds, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
The two great experiments of humanity.
God already knows the outcome. The outcome is the Kingdom. His passion for me is beyond my own. So He tests me only so that when His creation lives in his purpose driven life, He will have done well by his fleeced lab coat, appropriately taking the title of Father. I am only one variable in an eternal slate of x and y— but I matter. I am that important that God bothers testing me at all. And for that, I am forever grateful of my Creator.
The question now becomes, “How am I doing?”
-Jason O’Toole
(Source: memoir.jasonotoole.com)
Tweet
