| I wonder, sometimes, what sorts of things I might find myself doing that will ultimately have some sort of impact. That is to say, I would like, upon having completed my travails through life, to look back to and to see a certain footprint on the world. I'm not sure that it necessarily has to be a vestige that sings my praises, but that at the very least declares that I was here, and was used for something greater.
God gets the glory, true. God should get the glory, even truer. But even sinners like King David and the Apostle Paul have left indelible traces that they were powerful vessels used for the Kingdom.
It is my assertion that throughout life, everyone is seeking power. Everyone. Not a single one is exempt from that categorically sweeping meta-maxim. We identify those that we conclude to have power and try to get as close to them as possible, if not actually try to claim that power for our own. Nowhere is this clearer than on Capitol Hill. It is a place teeming with staffers who are suckling at the "teet of power" as it were. Ravenous for influence and starving for clout...people are beside themselves clawing after it...trying to play their cards right so that maybe at the end of their career, they will have an actual legacy to leave behind.
I don't speak as one who is somehow above this, but I will say that I have been able to identify this kind of mentality to a certain degree and it saddens me. People don't know what true power is. Pilate asked Jesus "What is Truth?" and turned away. Well, in the same vein, I ask "What is Power?" Is it merely to be able to get whatever you want, whenever you want? Is it the ability to inspire fear in those who would stand in your path? One would be left to draw those conclusions if you were able to overhear half the lunches and coffee breaks that I do.
But deep down in the core of our beings, I think we all recognize that true power is not about getting what you want. It's about being able to lay down what you want for something greater. Who's more powerful - the one who can decimate anything that would prevent (s)he from getting what (s)he wants, or the one that is not so beholden to any one thing that would seek to make him a captive? I maintain that I am more powerful NOT if I can kill 100 men to get money, but rather when I need not anything, least of all money because it is not my master.
Power, I think, comes from who you serve. If you serve yourself, you are by definition going to be forever weak. If you serve money, sex or fame...you are by definition crippling any chance you have of true impact, because your service of inanimate means will ultimately lead to destruction. However, think of the power that comes from serving the One who actually HAS power? How powerful does that make you if you serve the One who creates, destroys and gives life? To give your life in His service would seem to be the only path to true power.
And it is.
And it's also the only way to true life as well.
Just think about it.
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