No Small Lives

We’re six days into the New Year and that means the ads you see on your screens and hear on your radio are all about making changes. Improving our diets. Getting fit. Taking control of our finances. Organizing our homes. Changing this and changing that.

Marketers know that with the new year our desire for a new way or a better thing or at least a change in the way we look or feel is heightened. We want our lives to be different …..we want them to be better.

But if we pay close attention to that desire we realize it’s more than that. We want to know there’s a purpose to all of this. We want to know we’re making a difference. We want to know our lives matter.

And they do.

You’re 1 in 7,000,000,000 people on this planet but there’s One who knows your name. He created you (Psalm 139:13). He is the One who gives you breath (Genesis 2:7). And he knows the number of hairs on your head (Matthew 10:30).

Our lives matter and so do our choices. Who we are at home and at work and the gym. It matters. What we do in the grocery store or the bank and at the salon. It matters.

You don’t have to be an athlete, an entertainer, a politician or author. It’s those of us in our workplaces, at the schools, and in lines at the store checkouts that make the difference.

There are no small lives. “For in him, we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)

And it’s the day to day living where it counts the most.

Living like it matters is when you choose to smile at the disgruntled guy in line at the express checkout and letting him go ahead of you since he only has 3 items compared to your 14.

It might be calling your parents when you’d rather sit and watch your favorite show. Or fixing a meal for your neighbor. It’s also when you don’t overcrowd your calendar so that you are available to your teenagers just in case they want to talk.

What you think is mundane may be someone’s most meaningful moment. No matter who and where you are, you can live like it matters.

That’s the most important change you can make in 2017.

Photo courtesy of nina lindgren