what makes me tick?
Often I just have to stop and ask it: “Why bother?” Such a simple question, and it pierces the fog of all swirling activity, like a deer caught in headlights. Most people are afraid to ask it, because they feel trapped because they are trapped.
That nagging question slammed home again today driving home from a fantasy whirlwind 21st anniversary of romance with a beautiful woman - it was the Residence Inn, downtown Cleveland, including free tickets a cop gave us to see the Indians play the most momentous cliff-hanger of the season: 13 innings…
Driving home, the day ahead loomed threatening, pressure-filled, far too busy for a Saturday. Especially a Saturday with perfect golf weather. Why strain to teach, plan the meetings, make the calls, and put up with it? The answer came quick, it set my heart on fire, and it came from a strange verse:
For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Romans 1:21 (NASB)
It’s a passage telling the long, dark history of humanity, reaching far back to the dawn of civilization 40,000 years ago, the anthropologists say. An inexplicable burst of civilization appears out of nowhere, and it baffles evolutionists. Yet always, with the earliest artifacts of civilization found anywhere, spiritual awareness is evident. Religious artifacts, burial of the dead, awareness of eternity - always present.
For 38,000 of those 40,000 years they did not know about the glorious revelation and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Here we sit, in the most priviledged era with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the most wealthy and educated nation in history, and I was born into comfortable suburbia, received the education impossible for most. Towering above all that is the wealth of spiritual training, experience and contageous instruction freely given - all this while I disdained it and desperately rebelled, yet I received it anyway, despite years of flight.
It was so easy for me to get saved - the right place, right time, right people… But then there’s this passage:
“For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Matthew 7:14 (NASB)
How true, and how amazing I’m one of “the few.” I wonder, sometimes, at that 38,000 years of dark and primitive human history - surely fewer still found the small gate during that time. I wonder at this, because it means so, so many perish, and I wonder if I should ask God that question: “Why bother?” Why bother allowing 38,000 years of lost souls - and still another 2,000+ years of “few who find it” since the crucifixion - and there’s just so much terrible, terrible lostness. Why did God bother do create?
And here is an amazing answer:
I can’t fully answer “Why bother?” for God, but I do know He considers all this human lostness and tragedy worthwhile because of this: He so very much loves even me. If only 0.1% of all humans throughout time get saved, to God that 0.1% fully answers the question, “Why bother?” He knew what He was doing:
Before the very first tragedy surfaced, His eyes were on His beloved children. One of those few priviledged ones was named Keith McCallum, and God pointed His finger at that person and said, “That’s why!” There is no way to respond to this, analyze it, debate it - I know and He knows how utterly unworthy this person is, and how utterly incomprehensible His grace is.
What makes me tick: it is so impossible to sit on this vast, mountainous wealth and watch Romans 1:21 unfold all around me. Even if I spend all my years and days suffering with complete sacrificial return, I could never scratch the surface of what I owe.
And then I realize: stop complaining. And I do. Until tomorrow.
