“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Frederick Buechner
There are an estimated 7.8 billion people in the world. If some determined (crazy) person decided to count one person per second until they counted every living human on our planet right now it would take them 247+ years to do so. No sleeping, no eating, no vacations. Just counting. That breaks my brain to think about it.
Want to know something even more brain breaking? Every one of us thinks differently what matters to us. There are (at least) 7,800,000,000 differing ideas about what matters most in the world. Religions are built on asking questions about what matters most. Philosophers write essays in journals trying to clarify what they think has ultimate meaning. Scientists use the scientific method to ask questions and find what matters in the details of nature. All of us have some sort of thought about these things and all of us think at least somewhat differently.
Whew. That is exhausting to think about. I think I need a break from trying to write this.
“How does this brain breaking way of thinking relate to our work?” you might ask.Thanks for asking. This is how: our work matters more and more when it relates more and more to what matters most. We all have our ideas of what matters most, but something somewhere has to matter most, right? More than our opinions or desires or preferences.
What if what matters most to the One who made us all, mattered most to us?
What if our work connected with what is on His heart, what he loves? What if we did, along with Jesus, what matters most to him?
Let me say it this way: our work matters most when we have Jesus’ heart in the way we do our work. I believe our work always matters, but it matters more and more as we relate to Jesus more and more and live out his heart more and more. Deeper. More meaningful. More life giving. More eternally focused.
You might wonder, “how can we know what matters to Jesus?” Here is the good news! He straight up tells us. No mysterious words. No cryptic statements. He shares his heart clearly and meaningfully. He shares his mission statement…where Jesus’ deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
Now the question is: how will we respond to what he says?
I know not all 7.8 billion people would agree with these things (see the second paragraph, above), but I want all 7.8 billion people to experience the goodness of it.