The Most Important Thing in the World

The class I am taking has instructed us to write about our values, hoping to help us connect our values with the actions we choose and the paths we take.

I am no poet, I am no philosopher, and I am bad at imitation, so I must speak plainly. For the sake of the subject at hand, I would like to write well and clearly.

The most important thing in the world is God. The thing I value most is His grace. The goal of my life is to bring glory to Him. This is so important that in comparison, everything else I value is worthless, and all other goals are cheap.

The value I place in God does not come from my own conscious choices and actions, but stems from the things that God Himself has done, the hope of eternal life that He gives, and the work that His Spirit does in my heart.

The world is full of selfishness, of injustice, of greed, of pride. Though the world is full of many other things as well, sin leaves a stain, and splits the world down to its core. Life can be full of beautiful things, but we feel that brokenness, and we all know the face of sorrow.

How could it be solved? We know we cannot ask for justice, because we would all be condemned. Are we all not guilty of contributing to the evil in the world? Do we not shudder at the extents of our self-centeredness? If we do not, have we truly examined ourselves? What we need, somehow, is for peoples’ very nature to be changed. What we need is forgiveness, for the world to be made right without destroying the inhabitants.

And somehow, God knew all of this.

We look at our fellow humans and struggle to find them worthy of love.

Would God find them more righteous than we do?

Yet He came to earth and sacrificed Himself so that we would be forgiven and made new. Jesus took our sins on himself so we could have the righteousness of God. He sent his Spirit of Goodness and Truth to guide us, to change our hearts, to free us from the constraints of our selfishness and give us understanding. 

And this is His promise, that I cling to desperately:

That all sinners who cry out to Him for forgiveness will no longer carry their guilt or their eternal consequences. That our value lies not in what we do or who we are, else we lose our value when we fail or take pride in our superiority when we succeed, but that our value lies in the things that have been done for us, the things that have been given to us. That, through the Spirit, our very nature can be continually changed to one of genuine love.

That in the end, every wrong will be made right. That one day, we will look at the world and all things in it and understand that it has all worked for the glory of God and for the good of those who love Him. That our God is powerful—not just to make good things come from good things, as anyone else can do, but powerful enough to make good things come even from the terrible things we see.

That Love will reign, that the victory has already been won.

That death will turn backwards and pain is an illusion.

That we can find a hope eternal

A peace that passes understanding

Joy that fills to overflowing.

That we can find Grace

Because Grace has come to us.

To know this shapes my entire life. I value this because I have no choice. This Truth encompasses all I was created to value and long for. Could I possibly understand something like this and view it with indifference? No- to know this is to carry a heart bleeding with gratitude and repentance.

If God has done this for me, if He has died on the cross to save me, a sinner, and if His greatest hope is that I rejoice in Him and work for His glory, that must be my greatest hope as well.

Similarly, what lengths shall I, myself, go to for others? Can I scorn a stupid classmate or dismiss an annoying child? The King of Heaven laid down his greatest Treasure for me, a sinner.

And what can I hold against other people? For I have rebelled against the very God who created me, and He died to forgive that.

Can I act with reluctance, can I obey just out of obligation? My debt has already been paid; shouldn’t everything I do be done out of rejoicing, and be done with twice the effort?

Do not misinterpret me: I fall very short very regularly. I do not pretend to have achieved all these things, or to live like I know that I ought to. Nevertheless, I keep trying. I keep working towards a life that properly reflects the things God has done for me, and when I cannot live up to that, I can still rejoice. (For, after all, the story of grace never had much to do with my own abilities.)

Now to Him who is able to do far more than all that we ask or imagine, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Bringing Stationary Means I at Least Have Good Intentions

The top shelf of my dorm room closet is dedicated to stationary.

I brought four boxes of it from home, without a second thought. I second guessed myself when I was unpacking in front of my mother, her eyebrows going higher and higher and her mouth twitching in amusement. 

“Uh, I didn’t mean to pack so much stationary” I said, handing the box of embarrassing Santa Claus Christmas cards back to her, “Better take those home. Um, but I’ll keep the rest of it. I will use this stationary. I will.”

I will.  

Last summer, I wrote lots of letters. Many were thank-you letters. I poured my gratitude into little polka dot cards, somehow turning “thank you for the graduation gift” into a page of cramped text. I talked happily of my college plans, and I usually ended the letter thanking them also for their encouragement.

Other letters were just notes to friends. I wrote about the things I did that week and the reasons I liked them. My cursive spilled over the margins of the page. My post scripts included post post scripts. I never wrote the letters that I knew my friends deserved. I could not write that much. My time was scarce. My letters were too few to illustrate how I valued them. Some friends I’ve yet to write to. It became a game of guilt; every time I wrote to a new friend I seemed to be leaving another very important one out. I told myself it was okay. One letter was better than zero letters.

So of course I brought my stationary to college.

I left so many friends at home. I still have so many people to thank.

I brought it almost hoping that my intent to write letters would be enough, that my friends would always know how much I missed them, that my family would write back to me regularly, that the people I meant to thank would feel my gratitude. Time is scarce here at college. Who would’ve thought? And letters take a lot of it.

I’ve written two so far, I think.

And I used notebook paper.

I don’t have as many letter-writing fantasies now, and I’m not disappointed in myself.

I’m still glad I brought my stationary, though. I won’t use it often. Won’t expect that. Won’t plan for it.

But I will use it.

I will.

Volunteering and Dead Turkeys

My Labor Day began with an alarm, and my usual morning remorse for the many hours I had not spent sleeping.

“Secretly, no one is counting on you,” my sleep-deprived brain decided. “You didn’t tell the hospital you would volunteer today, so they won’t miss you.” But I thought of the required service hours, and I knew this could easily be my last chance to work at the information desk. I was sure I was acting against my better judgement, but I grabbed my knitting, slipped on my tennis shoes, and drove the familiar route to the Bristol hospital.

I hoped for a good story. Last month, during my Saturday morning shift, a turkey met its untimely end flying into a lobby window. The potential for adventure seemed high, and besides that, this was the morning I’d write about for my assignment. These were the events I’d immortalize in ink. If my first blog post was funny, my week would be great.

My yarn was teal, my knitting needles were silver, and as usual, the fingerless glove I was making looked too big. I spent the early part of the day pulling my project out and re-knitting the first few rows a couple of different ways. I tried to keep my head up and smile at the people who passed, and one man stopped to thank me.

“You have a beautiful smile.”

I was startled, and I smiled more.

I’ve forgotten what I said back. I hope it included the phrase “thank you.”

Noon drew nearer, and I stopped looking for my adventure. The day had been thoroughly normal, if not a little emptier than usual. When someone wanted to visit a patient, I looked the room number up for them. When someone asked for the elevators or bathroom, I gave them directions. One family needed to know where the closest grocery store was, and in my typical “nothing but landmarks matters” fashion, I explained how to get to Food City. I changed my plan. Perhaps, when I wrote for my blog, I’d just talk about a normal day. I’d summarize why I got involved with the hospital, why I keep coming back, and hopefully make the morning’s job sound important.

An hour before my shift was over, a lady stopped at the desk, but didn’t ask for anything. I looked up from my knitting pattern. She’d only come to take some tissues- one for right then and eight to carry back with her. Tears were streaked across her blotchy red cheeks, and her nose was wrinkled in a quiet sniff.

I was suddenly still.

She took the tissues back to the group of chairs in front of the Intensive Care Unit. Five people had sat there together since nine that morning, and now the oldest woman’s hands were buried in her face, and the echo of her choked sobs were quietly lost in the large room. The lady who’d brought the tissues buried herself in the other’s arms. Three men were standing there beside them, immovable, stone-faced. One wrapped his arm around the woman with the tissues. One had taken off his baseball cap, and now held it in his clenched fist.

They were helpless.

I was helpless.

I took the tissue box from the desk abruptly, and walked over to the group. I handed it to the red-faced lady numbly. “You can have the whole box, we have plenty.” She gave me a heartbroken “thank you.”

“Of course.”

There were unopened tissue boxes under the desk, so I opened an extra and replaced the one I’d given her. I prayed for them. I did not know them, and I did not know what had happened. “Give them comfort. Give them healing.”

When 12:30 came and my 4 hour shift was up, I did not know what to write about.

I’m supposed to reflect on my volunteering.

Somewhere, the point should be that doing good for your community is important.

The point got lost. My writing plan got lost too. I know the real point, because I’ve seen it before. I’ve worked here for years.

Sylvia Meredith, your days are not rough. Not really.

I needed the reminder.

I’m in college now. It’s a little bit stressful. It’s a little bit exhausting. I’m great at thinking of reasons to complain.

But my days are not rough, not really.

I could’ve left my volunteering job with the memory of dead turkeys and lost phones.

I could’ve left with the memory of my normal direction-giving routine.

But I’ll leave remembering the women who cried.

And I’ll pray for them still.