I was expecting a great story in the record-crushing "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" blockbuster.
I wasn't expecting to find a mirror reflecting the lives of so many people I've known.
It's Rey's story. A young woman on a desolate planet, surviving by scavenging parts from a space junkyard. When she's asked, "Who are you?" she zero-sums her life this way: "I am no one."
Until she discovers the truth that changes her life forever.
She's made for more. She finds that she's here for something much greater than just scavenging. She's destined for greatness. As a warrior for a better world.
And that's the image in the mirror. Of so many of us who have settled for just surviving. For just doing life, one predictable - and often purposeless - day at a time. Not a bad life. Just an insignificant, too-small life. Scavenging.
Maybe that's why a light has gone on inside millions of people when they've met a Man named Jesus. Because He has said, "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full" (John 10:10).
To the full. Implying that we've been settling for empty. For less than we were created for.
I think we know something - and someone - is missing. No matter how far - or not far - we may have climbed up Mount Happiness. No friendship, scholarship, championship, or relationship has filled the hole in our heart.
They can't. Because we're made for more. The "more" the Bible reveals in this statement about Jesus Christ: "All things were created by Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:16).
I am created by Jesus. For a relationship with Jesus. Just as the earth is created to revolve around the sun, its source of life. Anything less is, in reality, spiritual scavenging.
It's not God's fault I've lived beneath my destiny. I - along with all my fellow humans - decided to live for me. With God on the margins, at best. Maybe a compartment, but not my reason to live.
God had every right to let us have the life without Him that we seem to want. But He loves us too much for that.
He proved it. By sending His one and only Son not from "a galaxy far, far away," but from heaven. To become one of us. And this takes my breath away - to die for us. Absorbing on a cross all the pain and all the penalty for all our hijacking of our life from Him.
I still can't get over it. From the day I trusted this Jesus to forgive my sin and pilot my life, I've been discovering the "more" I was searching for.
With His love and His grave-conquering power, I've graduated from scavenging to being a warrior. Unleashing the force of His love in my family...my work...my personal world.
Finding Jesus. Finding my destiny. Never "settling" again.
