Care Instructions for a Life Worth Living

The Hope of Transformation

I am disappointed with myself. I am disappointed not so much with particular things I have done as with aspects of who I have become. I have a nagging sense that all is not as it should be.

Some of this disappointment is trivial. Some of this disappointment is neurotic. Some of this disappointment, I know, is worse than trivial; it is simply the sour fruit of self-absorption.

But some of this disappointment in me runs deeper. When I look in on my children as they sleep at night, I think of the kind of father I want to be. Then I remember how my daughter spilled punch at dinner and I yelled at her. Then I saw that look of hurt and confusion in her eyes, and I knew there was a tiny wound on her heart that I had put there, and I wished I could have taken those sixty seconds back.

And it’s not just my life as a father. I am disappointed also for my life as a husband, friend, neighbor, and human being in general.

I am disappointed that I still love God so little and sin so much.

I am disappointed at my capacity to be small and petty.

Sometimes, although I am aware of how far I fall short, it doesn’t even bother me very much. And I am disappointed at my lack of disappointment.

I am in a state of disappointment. I am missing the life that I was appointed by God to live--missing my calling. And I have disappointed God. I have removed him from the central role he longs to play in my life; I have refused to “let God be God” and have appointed myself in his place.

But God is determined to overcome the defacing of his image in us. His plan is not simply to repair most of our brokenness. He wants to make us new creatures. So the story of the human race is not just one of universal disappointment, but one of inextinguishable hope.

The good news is especially that the kingdom of God is closer than you think. It is available to ordinary men and women. It is available to people who have never thought of themselves as religious or spiritual. It is available to you. You can live in it--now. This means in part that your story is the story of transformation. You will not always be as you are now; the day is coming when you will be something incomparably better--or worse.

C. S. Lewis expressed that hope this way:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

This is why Jesus came. This is your calling--to become what Lewis calls an “everlasting splendor.” The desire for transformation lies deep in every human heart. This is why people enter therapy, join health clubs, get into recovery groups, read self-help books, attend motivational seminars, and make New Year’s resolutions. The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope.

The good news as Jesus preached it is that now it is possible for ordinary men and women to live in the presence and under the power of God. It is about the glorious redemption of human life--your life.

Do you believe such a life is possible for an ordinary human being? Do you believe it is possible for you?