That We're All Different Is What Makes Love Worthwhile

 You and I - we are not journeying the same journey.

And yet maybe, in light of this, we are.

I mean, there's definitely a commonality in our lives - it is that we live, and that during that living we are given the choice and opportunity to live forever. The Gospel is centrally this.

But the gospel is also meaningless unless we have the desire to a life worth living forever. A life where we come to a place of flowing empathy. One where jealousy recedes, not returning like a high tide. One where an acknowledgement - a true, heartfelt acknowledgement - that we are not the same, can never be the same, but we can, perchance, be one.

That oneness takes a lifetime to fulfil. But it leaves us more fulfilled than anything else.

While yes, we are created to commune with God and enjoy His love, we're also created to share it. To commune with others with a cyclic outpouring of this love.

But if you haven't noticed, the world is broken. And it's broken as a result of our own brokenness, and we become more broken by its brokenness - by one another's brokenness.

That is until we get connected and rewired with the source of love.

You and I, we can't walk the same path. And it's when we try - when we fight over places, people, things - that we come undone and move steps away from being one. But we'll have moments and seasons where our paths meet. We'll greet one another, walk step by step with one another - and in a complete sense our paths do, in the event of this, become one. But the actual life and story that each of us have is different and we should not fight, nor compare, over what meaning can be reached from each other's journey.

That grief you're holding - let it be the very thing that lets people in to your story. Let them come to see your story as uniquely beautiful. 

That grudge you're holding - let it be the very thing you place on the altar. Let it be known that you have surrendered it. Rise strong like the flames that engulf it and let yourself step away from that moment with a gratitude for the peace now afforded.

That jealousy you walk hand in hand with, you know... the one that gives you some rationalisation of why you behave the way you do - let it be traded for what God has for you - which is enough, and even more, than you wanted to have for yourself.

That person who is no longer yours - let your heart come to see that they were never yours. We belong to no one and no one to us - except the loving arms of our Father in heaven. 

That season that has come to a close - let it be so. Your story is unfolding. The pages may turn at a different rate to others, the storyline may not follow the incandescent memory of a narrative structure afforded to you in your primary school years, and the chapters may seem longer or shorter. But you must go on. You must lean towards whatever the Author has for you next. 

Those frustrations, disappointments - let them be handed to God. His answers to your questions, His desires for your heart - they trump all the advice that Job's friends and yours could ever pour over your head like ash. His robe will cover your body better than the feeble attempts you grapple for to clothe yourself with sackcloth.

Arise. Young man, young woman. Child of God.

Your story is beautiful. It is your own. Be wanting for nothing that others have in their own stories. You have not the faintest idea of the things that they wish to let go. You have no idea of why the things they have are in fact in their stewardship. You are not wise unto these things. Seek wisdom from above. Seek peace from above. Seek the thing that matters - redemption from the things that don't.

Oneness will result. And therein lies the beauty of surrendering all.