I did something strange today. The confused looks on peoples' faces startle me whenever I choose to admit it to someone, “I went to the cemetery.”
As I think back I don’t usually give people a chance to respond, mainly because I feel so awkward and wonder if they do too. Fumbling to explain, I try to put words to the fact that I periodically wander around this particular cemetery with the intention of adjusting my rather “off” perspective about life. To be honest, it happens rather quickly once I pass through the towering brick entrance. In a matter of moments, my mind races with essential things, with eternal things, with the meaning and value of deep and significant people, with the purpose of life and the reality of death. All of it comes racing to the front of my mind and quickly pushes out the illusory things around me that continue to make promises they can’t keep.
Life is short and unpredictable. I saw a handful of headstones for people only 20 years old. I saw a plate of a girl born the same year I was and died only three years ago as a mother of three. My eyes would look out and see rows of white, black and gray stones, all of which carry stories of loss, tears, unresolved conflicts, final words left unspoken and dreams cut short. As I sat on a tree stump and prayed, I wondered at who these people were and what their lives looked like. Who cries for them still? What did they do with the days they had? What would they tell us if they could speak to the living? What regrets did they have? What, at the end, would they say mattered more than anything else? What didn’t matter at all?
I sat still. Looking. Thinking. Praying. I told the Lord, “I do not want to live for myself.”
I continued, “I surrender to You, and I want to want the things that matter most to You. Will You carefully change every desire that is not of You and form it into Your pure desires? And above all else, will You do whatever it takes to spread the Kingdom of God through me?”
I meant it. I don’t want to die and to have had no higher purpose than a career, or an accomplishment that bore me certain recognition, or cute hair, nice clothes and a car that made people look. I don’t want to build my life on a foundation that goes no further than my own small name on my own little corner of a vast universe. I begged God to spare me such anxious and self-absorbed living. “Stop me, if need me,” I whispered.
Quite baffling it is to even consider that this tiny dot on the universe could be a part of the building of a Kingdom. But it is very true. What makes the most sense, and what makes it possible in the first place, is that this is not about me or my ability to lay one brick on top of another; this is about the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, and who also lives in me!
To live outside of this Kingdom purpose, to live for smaller, more hollow things seems like an early, living death. Too often, the way we live our lives, chasing shallow, external, selfishly motivated ends, is slowly turning us in to the walking dead. If you are observant, you can almost see it in people as they pass by. These lonely people have nothing to offer to the rest of the world. Every motivation, desire and drive is turned toward self. It is the atrophy of all things good. It is death.
So, as it was said, “Consider the lilies, they neither toil or spin,” and yet our Father cares for every need they have. It is not in our own hands to make our lives worth something, it happens because of surrender. It happens because we shift our gaze upward. It happens because we allow Him to love us and in turn we leave a trail of His aroma, not ours (and there is a rather significant difference!), as we go.
This is the spreading of the Kingdom, it starts with the simple scent of humility, selflessness and the worship of Someone far bigger than ourselves.
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