A short, Korean man stands on the stage of the middle school auditorium. Filled with college students, the room sat quietly, listening attentively to, ironically, a Kim JongIl look-alike. He pushes his black-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. He asks again. "What is your source of Significance? Beauty? Intellect? Your achievements, maybe. The approval of others. Are these what make you important?"
People shift in their seats.
"In our hearts, we divide the world into losers and winners. Then we try, desperately, to be one of the winners, according to our own strict and self-imposed definition. And when we fail to be one of the winners, we struggle to reestablish our significance, to feel relatively superior. We are driven by fear of being the loser." He takes a sip of water from his bottle and puts it back down.
"Have you ever failed in life?" he asks. Somehow, he, in all his white-collar-shirt-blue-jeans-glory, has enraptured them. "If you have not failed before, you are a coward. Fail and fail early in life.
"How frightening it is when your source of Significance is on the line. Your desire to cover up your insecurity causes so much pain, so much struggle. But such insecurity," he asserts, "is wickedness. It's greediness.
"Do not seek positive self-esteem. Do not try to feel good about yourself. As C.S. Lewis says, 'You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.' You do not eat to poop. You cannot gain significance by trying to gain significance. We need to acknowledge our faults, our imperfections. There is something so satisfying about not having to feeling good about ourselves. By trying always to raise your self-esteem, to cover your insecurity, you suffer and only feel dissatisfaction.
"Such goals are blasphemous rejections of God's Love for you." He looks out into the crowd, directly at their faces. "You're saying that His Love, His gifts for you mean nothing to you. A woman strives to make herself look beautiful with cosmetics and clothes. She suffers to appear beautiful. Her husband, observing his wife, tells her, 'Why must you do all this? I love you either way. Is my love not enough for you?' She looks at her husband and, after a silent moment, replies, 'You do not understand. This is important to me. You do not understand what this means to me.' Is this not a sad picture?
"What is your source of Significance?" He comes, now, to his conclusion. "Our source of significance comes from God. God raised us, the poor and weak, to be princes and princesses. Royalty do not have to do anything to be important. They simply are, through birth. We simply are important because God has made us so.
"Every little thing we do, He will see. Jesus says that we are the Salt of the world, the light on top of the hill. Prayer changes the world, so pray! Here is where our significance lies."
Every little thing we do in His Name has the power to change, to influence. God offers unconditional, pure, and unearned love. We do not have to do anything to be important, to be loved. In God, we simply are, we simply belong.
You are not a good person. But it's okay. You are still loved; you still will be loved; you have been cared for, despite everything you've done, despite your short-comings.
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete."
John 15:9-11
+ much of the words are paraphrased. Not his exact words.
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