Sunday, 11 January 2009

• I Want to Make You Feel Small...Because You Are?

  Guest post submitted by Delilah4Christ

  Do you remember when you were a kid and in the early morning light there would be a beam of light protruding from a window somewhere and in the silence and stillness of the moment you could see dust floating and falling, within a small shaft of light? Tiny specks that you never knew existed until this moment completely caught your attention.
  

  I was intrigued by this when I was a child. Yet imagine our Earth as one of those tiny specks of dust floating in the sunlight as compared to the world around us, in all its seeming massiveness.

  

   

  When we were finally able to take photos from deep space, the image above was rendered, the pixels took months to be sent back to Earth and finally gave us a complete picture of something so marvelous. The pale blue dot- as described by Carl Sagan, a tiny speck of dust suspended in a beam of light. Our planet swirling about in the vast universe, which proves to be more larger in comparison to our planet than we first thought. Here is Carl Sagan’s response to this image:

   “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived here – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
  

  
  The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
  
  Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.”

  Can you see yourself on that pale blue dot? From the perspective of deep space does the fact that you were born and live today impact the universe at all? The cold depth of space in its all its vastness is not effected by you and I. The planets would still keep on existing if the earth imploded. They would keep drifting along in their paths, completely oblivious to the fact that we had come and gone. The cry of the inhabitants on earth could not be heard, even if in unison, by even the nearest planet or star. We could yell, scream and shout until we were hoarse but our voices could not carry across the distance of space. In the scheme of things we are quite insignificant.

  Why is that such an impalpable thing to say? I know it strikes fear in my heart that my existence might not be as important as I would like to think it to be. Moving back home and being on Christmas break made me feel this feeling of insignificance. I didn’t have school and I worked as much as I could. When there was a day when I didn’t have any of these usual routine things to do, I felt very restless. I felt as if my life served no purpose that day at all. I felt as if I needed to be going somewhere or doing something, I even felt like running away so to speak, or escaping something but I couldn’t point out what. I even had the physical feeling of needing to go running or jogging. I was trying to escape a feeling- a feeling of unimportance.

  I think out of all the phobias of man insignificance is the greatest. The idea that at our life’s end we did nothing, we affected no one, makes us shudder. We push it out of our thinking trod onward trying to prove our worth, our importance. There are so many books and movies that herald “Be a Better You.” The American Spirit is soaked in this expectancy, that each person should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become another rags to riches story. Men want to be the steadfast hero, women want to be the most beautiful creature on earth. We want this thing called significance so badly, we climb mountains, we have talk shows, we go to college, we travel to remote places. We strive and groan and fight against what we know in the back of our minds is the truth. The truth that we are insignificant. Ouch! I know it hurts, but hold on with me for a minute!

  When I say we are insignificant, I mean we are insignificant apart from God. God put this feeling in us, to want to be important, to serve a noble purpose larger than ourselves. To be apart of a family, a patchwork, a unity, a puzzle piece in the scheme of it all. The world as we know it has taken this God given desire and redirected it towards themselves, in an effort to find significance in self.
  

  In the beginning this is what Lucifer did. Lucifer a.k.a. Satan, was originally an angel of God, purpose: to worship God. His glory and power was for the purpose of glorifying God. One day he decided he wanted to deviate from this plan God had for him, he decided he wanted to be like God and bring glory, honor, and significance to himself. Then he decided he wanted to bring mankind down with him. I think we know where the story goes from there. So as you can see, this finding self importance is not what God had in mind. Our significance is found when we connect ourselves to God and acknowledge Him in all we do. When we bring glory to Him that is the ancient of days, the one that will never pass away, then our legacy is with Him, who unlike this Earth though filled with human accomplishment will pass away.

  Jesus though God and created this huge expanse, came down into the insignificance that is man. He became the lowly son of a carpenter, born in a animal feeding trough. He felt all that we feel when we feel all alone and unimportant. He chose to feel this feeling, to let us know that He understands. He knew poverty, He never traveled further than a few hundred miles from His hometown, He never became a rock star or earthly king. He slept on the ground and trusted God for His daily bread.
  

  Yet, how is it that all this is true and He is still remembered and honored today? How is it that this man who in the perspective of the American dream was a complete failure, is the most documented historical figure ever? It was because He aligned Himself with God’s purposes and lived His life to solely to do the will of His Father. This a revolutionary thought, that our significance is not in ourselves but in glorifying God and showing how significant He is.

  

  "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it". Luke 9:24

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