The feeling that I have to do something to be someone is crippling. And it's a lie.
Truthfully, we were meant to rule, meant to sit upon the thrones of an unbroken Earth. In the mystery of that all but forgotten dream, men and women act together for the good of all things: soil, plant, ocean, animal, person, cosmos - all things.
Yet that is a dream, no, a nightmare. All of time pushes that memory on us. We know what we were made of and made for, at least if we mine deeply enough into ourselves, we know. But because we refuse to accept the Way back to real accomplishment - the kind that does good out of who we are, not for the sake of becoming good - we only seek to do great things in order to silence the nightmare that whispers we've failed.
And of course we have failed. Read one news article on the BBC, or any other news site about the state of the nations, and prove to me we haven't.
And of course I have failed. Shadow me for one day, or half a day, and note how I give in to bitterness and anger, and prove to me I haven't.
I have spurned the throne I was made to sit upon, and so have you.
The paradox is we attempt to rebuild that throne, though we use materials that melt in the noonday sun - really, by noon I'm too tired to hold up the mask of respectability I've constructed to wear in front of my students and my children; I wilt under the heat from heaven, and by the end of the day I'm sitting in the pool of my pseudo-throne.
Then, if I listen hard enough and submit to Christ, I stop doing for my own sake - I even stop doing anything at all. I'm still. The Voice I know reminds me of what He's making me, of who I already am in Him: His.
I see the throne I have broken; He's rebuilding it.
And on that day, the one when the dead will no longer be dead, He will finish His work so I can resume mine - and I will be fully equipped to do what He intended for me to do in the first place.
