Tag Archives: Thank You

Success And Significance

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Chip MacGregor, of MacGregor Literary, recently wrote a blog post that discussed success and significance which I found enlightening. Not because of words of wisdom for his intended audience of writers, but because of one sentence he wrote near the end of his post regarding judgement that applies to every human walking this earth.

His point was this: judgment happens at the end of time, not at the moment of our death.

As I wrap up eight months of intensive study in the book of Revelation, the subject of God’s final judgement at the end of time is fresh on my mind. Reading Chip’s post, however, gave me a perspective regarding this coming event I’d never considered before.

 

Perhaps it is a new way of looking at the end times for you as well.

Let me explain.

Chip gave an example of a man who influenced his young life, and stated the impact of that one man’s life, of any life, cannot be measured until the end of time.

Have you ever considered that? I hadn’t.

It isn’t when we die that our life stops impacting people. It isn’t when our children die. Or our grandchildren. It is not until God sends his son, Jesus, back to his fallen world that the full measure of how our lives influenced the world around us will be known.

Shortly before my mother died, she told me she was afraid she would be forgotten. Another friend asked that after he died, his family think about him every now and again.

We don’t want to be forgotten, do we?

 

We want our lives to matter. We want to hear God say on the day he calls us home to him in heaven, “Well done good and faithful servant”. And it won’t be until the very day when Christ established his new heaven and new earth we will be able to know just how far and wide the influence of our lives actually extended.

Back to Chip’s post on success and significance. He said because our lives impact others in ways we may never know, significance matters more than success.

Do you agree or disagree?

Leave a comment below to share your thoughts on the subject. If you think others would appreciate reading this, please share it through the social media buttons.

Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. 1 Thessalonians 4:11 (NLT)

I wish you well.

Sandy

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Do You Have Enough Containers?

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by Sandy Kirby Quandt

Hello. My name is Sandy and I have a problem. I hold onto plastic containers and precariously pile them into the cabinet in case I need them later.

This may be a trait I inherited from my mother. I don’t know. I just know whenever Sissy and I visited Mom’s house, Sissy went through Mom’s plastic containers like a wild woman. She made sure each bowl had a matching lid and threw out whatever she believed to be unnecessary.

Yes. I know. My cabinets could use Sissy’s intervention, but I wonder … is it possible in all my messy saving of plastic containers, it might be biblical?

Hmmm …

Several scriptures come to mind when I think this may be true. Instances where it was a good thing to have extra containers.

Abraham was told he would have descendants too numerous to count. More than the grains of sand on the shore. No amount of containers would be able to hold them.

Do you remember the widow in 2 Kings 4?

Creditors were coming to take her two sons as slaves. She went to the prophet Elisha and he told her to go around to all her neighbors, asking for empty jars. Then he told her to fill them with oil.

When she reached her last jar, she asked her sons for another, but there were no more. That’s when the oil stopped flowing. The jars of oil were sold to pay their debts and save the sons.

Sounds to me like it’d be good to have extra containers in our cabinets.

God’s mercies are new every morning. There aren’t enough containers to hold them and there isn’t enough ink or paper to record them.

We are told God’s blessings will be poured out on us and we will receive a full measure,  pressed down and overflowing.

And finally, Paul tells us we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives.

Sissy may be disciplined enough to limit the number of plastic containers she stores, but not me. You never know when you might need more. And I’m thinking, it really could be biblical. 🙂

While I can’t say for certain whether having extra containers is a good thing, one thing I can say for certain is we’ll never have enough containers to hold all the many rich blessings God bestows on us each and every day.

Do you have more plastic containers in your cabinets than you really need, or do you hold onto a couple more … just in case?

Leave a comment below to share your thoughts on the subject. If you think others would appreciate reading this, please share it through the social media buttons.

There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit! Romans 5:3-5 (MSG)

I wish you well.

Sandy

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