The Answer in the Details

What would you do if you were God? Who would you let live? Who would you kill off? What type of society would you want to create? One without poverty? No more disease? No more starvation? Would your world be a utopia, free from all these nasty day-to-day distractions like work, laundry, bills, and iphone updates?

Whatever you would do as God, I would be willing to bet that you would not do what the God of the bible did. He speaks the world into existence, as we say "all things, seen and unseen". He creates good out of nothing. He did not make it because it was good, it was good because he made it. From the beginning, God is the standard of good from the very beginning.

But then, as we know, something happened. The contingently good creation turns on its ultimately good Creator. Mistaking their goodness as the standard instead of God's goodness as the standard. Man is not content anymore to be man. He wants to be God.

So what do you do in this situation, if you are God? Do you ignore the rebellion? Really? Not if you care one ounce about justice. Do you punish the rebels, subjecting them to some sort of miserable God-inflicted terror with no hope of recovery? Not if you are the least bit merciful. Do you un-speak the world and all in it, chalking it up as a failed experiment? Not if you are in the least bit concerned with your reputation.

In the interest of fulfilling the demands of justice, mercy, and reputation, the God of the bible becomes man. You may not have thought of this before, but Jesus not only takes on flesh, but he takes on all the seemingly meaningless details of day-to-day existence.

So Jesus worked. He met poor people. He met diseased people. He met people who were starving. He met people who were attempting to turn the world into a utopia. He healed many of them.

But that is not all he did. Jesus also entered into the everyday mundane details of life. His clothes got dirty. He took care of finances. He took care of his mom. He buried his dad. He lived with a house full of brothers. He ate. He drank. He was tired, worried, saddened, excited, and jovial.

It is weird, is it not, that God lived all the normal, un-remarkable, mundane details that we live. I am pretty sure we would be disappointed if we ever found a record of the lost 30 years of Jesus in-between his birth and public ministry. At least we would be disappointed if we were looking for some dramatic, heroic, superman stuff.

It is because Jesus lived these mundane details that they take on a real meaning to us. In Jesus' life, God lived not only the remarkable, memorable, big moments of life, but also the mundane and unremarkable.

In Jesus, God did what we would never in a million years think to do. Jesus threw off all the ultimately important trappings of being God to put on each and every one of those contingent, seemingly meaningless details of the mundane human life.

This is what it means for Jesus to live our life for us. His everyday life gives meaning to our everyday lives.

Are you waiting on God to do something dramatic in your life? Maybe he will. I think you should consider the fact that he wants to do something dramatic in and through the mundane details of your everyday life.

I know this is not what you would do if you were God but since when does he play by your rules?