A Wonderful Life?

What is a ‘wonderful life’? Is it being surrounded by the love of friends and family? Community respect?  Prosperity, happiness and comfort?

If Jesus came to give us abundant life, not just for eternity but for our lives right now, is it supposed to be a ‘wonderful life’?

When we receive God’s grace by believing in what His Son Jesus did for us in the work of the cross, we can know that because of His love for us, He desires for us to have both eternal life with Him and an abundant life now. Does this lead to a wonderful life? And what if it doesn’t? Does it mean our faith isn’t strong enough?

According to the Gospels, Jesus' life was certainly abundant.  As was His death and resurrection.  But did Jesus have a wonderful life? 

Henry Thiessen wrote that Jesus was “grave without being melancholy, joyful without being frivolous.”  He loved. He taught. He served. He sacrificed.

He was rejected, even by his friends and family – the people of His hometown. He worked hard – in giving, not in trying to gain anything.  He was not financially prosperous or comfortable.  He was misunderstood. He was wrongly judged.  He lost community respect, not that He ever sought it.  And He suffered – to His death. 

Maybe we prefer the wonderful life, the rose garden.  But perhaps the abundant life that God desires for us is found in the wilderness, sometimes for a season, sometimes for a lifetime.  It may not fit the cultural definition of ‘wonderful’ but it can be so much more.

Wherever we are, for whatever season, He wants us to let go of everything and give Him every part of who we are.  It’s not all about us.  Wherever He places us is so that He is even more glorified and His greatness more pronounced.  And it’s not all about now.  He’s preparing us for something beyond this life.

I don't want to be distracted by the frivolously wonderful. I want to be willing to receive profound abundance, whatever God meant for that to mean.

Linking up with A Pause on the Path