The Fourth Sunday After The Epiphany

You’re not alone. We all desire to live meaningful lives . . . to be significant to others. We want to be purposeful, inspirational, and influential. Proof of this driving need is in the proliferation of tutorial vlogs, self-improvement blogs, self-help books, and numerous gurus and life coaches out in the marketplace. And still we remain unfulfilled, unsatisfied . . . discontented. Like a butterfly we flit from one flower to another, always seeking but never finding.

Then God quietly speaks to us above the loud clamor of every day: “Be still and know that I am God. Come to Me, you who are heavy laden. I promise you that when you seek and come to Me, you will find Me; I am as close to you as your heart. As a matter of fact, I am in your heart.”

And where the King is, there is the kingdom. We don’t have to look far and wide, high and low, or everywhere. He is here. His kingdom is here . . . in us and among us. Second Peter 1:3 (NLT) says that by His power God has given us “everything we need for living a godly life.” And He didn’t just stop with giving. Micah 6:8 tells us that God has gone even further in that He has “shown” us what is good and what He requires of us: “But to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

We don’t have to keep turning to all these self-improvement or self-help vlogs, blogs, books, and life coaches. In simply doing justly, in loving mercy, and in walking humbly each day our life becomes meaningful and purposeful and profitable in this world of the unjust, the unmerciful, and the arrogant. Without even being conscious of it, we wake up one day to find that our lives have become inspirational and influential to others. We discover then that we are not alone.