I think I probably started blogging for this very reason. I thought I was using this site to chronicle my journey through the Bible and the sampler quilt project. But to be honest, I’m sure some motivation came from a need to be relevant. I had just left a profession termed “Hollywood for ugly people”. I had been the teacher equivalent of a rock star in my school community. There’s nothing more affirming than being spotted in the wild by a gaggle of little girls who then drop everything and run at top speed towards you across the mall to hug and say hello. Am I right, my fellow teachers out there? You’re told that you inform and influence the future. You touch hundreds of lives over the span of your career.
Deep down, I believe we all thirst for relevance in our own ways. We’ve been created for eternity, yet exist in a temporal state. We strive to spend our time wisely, even in our hobbies. We wish to create things that last. We hope to leave a legacy, to someday be gone but not forgotten. We label and sign our quilts as we give them away to our loved ones. (I confess I do not label my quilts, but I plan to start with this one.)
I’m down to the final row of blocks, and I’ve joined the ones I’ve finished. As the blocks of this quilt are coming together, my hope is that it will be important to someone when I’m gone. But who am I kidding? As I look around me now, I don’t see it happening. My family isn’t into it at all.
But that’s okay. I’m still having fun, and the passage for this next block reminds me that it won’t even matter in the end.
Revelation 21:15 -20 – “The one who spoke with me had a gold measuring rod to measure the city, and its gates and its wall. . . The material of the wall was jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation stone was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst.”
There’s the old joke about the guy who labored his entire life. When he realized his days on earth were growing short, he consolidated all of his hard earned assets and bought gold. His life’s work was smelted and formed into one gold bar. One solid gold bar. When he died, he proudly brought it with him to St. Peter’s Gate. St. Peter took one look at what the man carried in his arms, and said, “Why’d you bring pavement with you? We’ve got plenty. Here, just throw it into that junk heap over there and come on in.”
There’s also the notion that our good deeds earn us jewels in our crowns. I don’t know where this idea came from. I do know that we are given royal status, as fellow heirs with Jesus of His kingdom. So I suppose there could be crowns involved in that scenario. Maybe those are the crowns the elders laid at the feet of Jesus in chapter 3 of Revelation. And they’re basically just returning what was given to them by Jesus in the first place.
So in the end, anything we have achieved or created in our time here on earth will not matter to us one. little. bit. Instead, we’re going to be overflowing with gratitude for what God achieved for us. He is the One who made us to be thirsty for relevance. He is the One who gives us that relevance. And those jeweled city streets of Heaven sound amazing, don’t they?
Cuts With Scissors 