Archives For meaning

When Precious People Consume Unprecious Things

samuel kee —  December 11, 2012 — Leave a comment

17151Let’s not waste anymore time; you are far too precious for that.  Your soul was handcrafted by a Being so full of love and passion, that should you see him, your heart would burst out of its cage, like an uncontainable animal.  He is everything that you were made for and nothing else can keep you going.

The more we enjoy God, the more enjoyable we find him to be and the more of him we find there is to enjoy.  We find that our enjoyment of him has no limits because he is infinitely able to satisfy us.  In every mouthful, we unlock an ocean more.

In contrast, the more we consume of this world, the less enjoyable we find it to be and the less there is to enjoy of it.  It actually deadens us, consumes us, and vanquishes us.  Every mouthful of this world leads to less satisfaction, not more—like a tongue full of sand.

Is this not your experience?  All of us have experienced the deadening effects of this world.  You can never get enough, you are always restless, and you’re never happy with your portion.  It always seems so big in your eyes, but it’s like a crumb in your belly, leaving you ravenous for more.

The opposite is true of God: just a crumb of God in your eyes is like several loaves in your stomach.  Just a taste of his infinite nature, goodness, and love, is an ocean of satisfaction.

If the table that you’ve been dining at continues to give you leftovers, crumbs and crusts from another meal, then have the courage to stand up and change tables.  You need to find your place at the Lord’s table, where God himself is the Waiter, serving us the very food that he designed us to consume.  Most everything around us is designed to run on a certain kind of fuel, so what makes us think that we’re any different?

Our assumption is that if we push God to the edges of our lives, then we’ll be free to have more happiness, love, enjoyment, etc.  We think our lives will be more satisfying.  But those who have been jaded by this world know differently.  Every bite of this world has been an unsatisfying disaster.

Let’s not waste anymore time; you are far too precious for that.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

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You Complete Me

samuel kee —  November 27, 2012 — Leave a comment

Though I haven’t seen the whole movie, nor do I plan on it, I have seen a well-known clip from the movie Jerry Maguire.  It’s the scene where Jerry lovingly tells Dorothy, “You complete me.”  Dorothy tenderly replies to Jerry, “You had me at hello.”

In just a few words, Jerry encapsulates humanity’s greatest search.  Every human is searching for something or someone to complete them.  Every person is aware of their own inner emptiness, a voracious vacuum in their life that’s trying to suck meaning from every encounter or experience.  We’re haunted by the emptiness within us; we’re afraid that it’ll catch up to us before we can satisfy it.  We’re quick to try to fill it, to make it go away, to act like we have a handle on it.  But when we’re alone, we hear only the vacuum, the emptiness is just as empty as it ever was; we hear only one question, “Why am I here?”  We realize that our existence is incomplete—that something is missing—and we’re longing for something or someone to complete us.

But we must go deeper than the surface level in order to satisfy our emptiness.  You’ve probably heard of the phrase “unconditional love,” right?  Unconditional love is love without conditions.  Through sickness and health, poverty or pain, your spouse is to love you.  Even when you’re ugly, you’re partner is to put no conditions on his love for you.

I want to introduce the idea of “unconditional meaning.”  Unconditional  meaning is meaning without conditions.  No matter what you’re going through, you have meaning in your life.  The meaning in your life is not conditioned upon your circumstances or experiences.  It supersedes conditions.  It’s meaning that can be found in sickness and in health, in suffering and in prosperity.

The trouble with Jerry Maguire is that he was finding completion in a conditional relationship.  His being “completed” is dependant upon Dorothy’s existence.  Were she to leave (through death or divorce), the plug would be pulled on his life.  The meaning would drain from it and, once again, he would be incomplete.

Our souls are not searching for conditional completion, but unconditional.  Only unconditional meaning will be able to fill the empty space in our souls.  Jesus Christ is the source of our unconditional meaning.  To him we must look and say, “You complete me.”  How is it that Jesus can do this but no one else can?  Jesus was both fully God and fully human.  Thus he brings to our souls the infinite satisfaction of man’s pursuit of God.  He brings to us not only a complete identification with our emptiness, but also the complete power to fill us.

The way to find meaning in your life is to find him.  “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25).  This is the paradox of meaning.  To find your meaning, you must not look for it; you must only look for him.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

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Your Life in 3 Words

samuel kee —  April 16, 2012 — Leave a comment

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We live in the pathway of this paradox.

I can summarize your life in just three words.  I know that sounds harsh at worst and overly simplistic at best.  The same goes for me.  My life can be wrapped up in just three words.  While we may buck at the thought of using just three words to capture something as complex as a human life, these three words will go a long way.  They can carry a ton of weight and will help you to make sense of much in your life.  Really.

What are the three words: problem, solution, and response.  That’s it. 

First, we have to understand our problem.  You have to realize what a mess you’re in, before you move on to anything else.  Different people have different manifestations of the mess.  Not everyone has the same mess, but everyone is in a mess.  Call it whatever you like to call it.  You could call it sin.  Or brokenness.  Our world is languishing beneath the weight of something heavy.  Life falls apart; we are surrounded by alienation and we are in alienation.  The things that we want to do, we can’t seem to figure out how to do.  The things we don’t want to do, we keep doing anyway.  We can’t control situations; the situations control us.  We’re on a downward spiral.  If left to ourselves, we’ll spend eternity apart from the God who made us and loved us.  And when we’ve been traveling a million, million ages into an eternity of suffering away from the merciful presence of God, we will have only just begun.  Facing eternity, we’re always at the beginning of our pain and never at the end.  That’s a huge problem.  Our sins were not committed against just anyone, but an eternal and Holy One. 

Second, we have to understand his solution.  God’s solution might come in a thousand different ways to us each day.  Because we are finite, we have no concept of how much an infinite being intercedes for us and cares for us.  But we do know the solution that he has chosen to reveal to us.  And it’s the solution to our biggest problem.  There’s a story about the great Hebrew trial in the book of Exodus.  They were enslaved in Egypt and God was planning a rescue mission.  God was going to strike down the firstborn in Egypt of every family that did not have lamb’s blood painted on their door frame.  Those who painted blood on their door frame we spared.  Even more, they were able to walk out of their slavery in Egypt, by going beneath the banner of blood on their doors.  They went from slavery to freedom beneath the blood of the lamb.  Thousands of years later, their Messiah was called “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).  Only his blood was not painted on a wooden doorway, but on a wooden cross.  And those who take shelter beneath the banner of blood on the cross, are free to leave their huge problem of sin.  They can walk out of their sin-prison, into freedom.  “Let my people go, so that they can worship me” goes the Exodus refrain (7:16).  True freedom is freedom from sin.  The whole point of freedom is to be with God in worship.  When we’ve been with God for a million, million ages, we’ll only be at the beginning of our joy and never at the end.

Third, we have to understand our response.  The plot line of the Scriptures is this: how are sinful beings going to get into a relationship with a holy God?  That’s what the whole bible is about.  The Bible wrestles with the paradox of transcendence, on the one hand, and intimacy, on the other.  Scripture demands both.  It wants both a Holy God and intimate communion with sketchy mortals.  We’re to make sure that we realize there is no god like our God.  We’re to feel the power of him having no rivals.  We’re to shudder at his holiness.  At the same time, we’re to long for being with him.  God loves us and he wants to be with his people.  We love God and long to be with our Maker.  Life doesn’t make sense without a Maker.  The whole of the Bible is about the paradoxical move from holiness to intimacy.  Yet, it makes this daring move anyway.  It goes where no other religion has dared to go.  It attempts to put our transcendent and holy God, under the same roof with crooked and craven sinners.  And it does.  Whether we’re ready for it or not, it does.  We live in the pathway of this paradox.  While being caught up in the eye of this storm, our response is to be that of worship.  “We do not know what else to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12).  Our response is worship.  Gratitude.  Thanksgiving.  Exuberance.  Joy.  The birthplace of joy is the crossroads of holiness and intimacy, that fearful intersection of God and humanity.

Our problem, God’s solution, and our response.  These are the three colors that are used to paint our lives.  You need to locate yourself within these three.  Are you in denial that you have a problem?  Are you able to see God’s solution?  Are you withholding a response?  Your life won’t make sense outside of these three words.

© Samuel Kee, 2012 

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Sick of Feeling Worthless

samuel kee —  January 7, 2011 — 1 Comment

His love for you is as real as the Son that he gave up.

When I was nine years old, I started saving quarters; I put them in a long, transparent plastic tube.  Eventually, I had enough quarters to buy something that I had my heart set on: a silver trumpet.  No longer would I have to play the goofy little bronze coronet; I would now have a slender and cool silver trumpet.  I felt like Louis Armstrong.

I gave a specific amount of silver quarters in order to purchase a silver trumpet.  Once I had saved the exact amount that I needed, I gave them to the person selling the silver trumpet.  I saved no more or no less than I needed.  I gave no more or no less than I needed.  The exchange was equal.

When you purchase something, you exchange one thing for another; and the worth of each is (usually) the same.  It would make no sense, for instance, to give one million dollars for an ordinary silver trumpet, or five dollars for it, for that matter.  When the receipts are totaled and the property is exchanged, you have something that’s the same worth as what you started with—and so does the other person.  Transactions are usually like equations in that they have equilibrium between both sides.

It has been 25 years since I made that purchase and I still have my silver trumpet.  And I do not miss my silver quarters, for I know that I have something that’s of the same worth. 

But what would happen if I gave an extraordinary amount of money for that trumpet?  Let’s say I gave $500,000 for it.  Even though I attained a silver trumpet, there is not equilibrium.  The trumpet is not worth $500,000.  So what happens to the worth?

Since equilibrium must be reached, I give extra worth to the silver trumpet, which was not there before.  The worth of $500,000 just doesn’t go away once the deal is sealed.  Worth just doesn’t vanish into thin air.  I now mentally transfer the worth of $500,000 onto my new trumpet.  It is now worth $500,000 to me, since that is what I gave for it. 

In the same way, the Scriptures teach us that God gave his perfect Son in exchange for imperfect humans (see 1 Peter 3:18).  This was not a fair purchase; there was not equilibrium between the sides.  The weight of glory on the Son’s side was a massive load compared with the hovering dust on our side.  The worth of “Godness” is more than humanness; divinity is always greater than depravity. 

When God gave up his Son to die on a cross, he was not doing it to rescue another God; now that would have been a fair deal.  That would have been like equal silver quarters for an equally valued silver trumpet. 

God did not sacrifice his Son in order to purchase God, but to purchase humans.  He gave far more than the worth of the purchase.  Even if you don’t believe in God or the event to which I am referring, you can still appreciate my line of thought.

But the worth that God gave just doesn’t go away; his $500,000 still looms.  As I said before, in cases like these, the purchaser will give the purchase the worth that it might have been lacking before, because of what he or she lost in the transaction.

The worth of God’s Son does not vanish into thin air.  Instead, it lands right on our heads, as God transfers to us the value of his Son.  He begins to treat us as his children, for that is what we have become. 

You cannot pretend that the added worth has just gone away.  It doesn’t and it can’t; it has been transferred to you. 

This means that all of the extra value that once was the distance between you and God, has now turned into something else, called love.  The difference between the value of what God gave and what you were in your worst moments, has been transformed into an enduring and steadfast love from the Purchaser, God, to the purchased, you.  He makes up the difference in value, in his love for what he purchased. 

And his love for you is as real as the Son that he gave up.  Remember, it just doesn’t go away.

If you have doubts as to whether God will care for you and get you through your trials, just remember all that God gave up in order to have you.  And if he gave up so much, then he will not forget its value and he will not fail to treat you with the worth of his own Son.  You are worth that much to him.

© 2010 by Samuel Kee

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