By pure virtue of the life we have, we’re abundantly rich — richer (from a living context) than the dead or those still yet to live. When someone’s died who I’d had cause to envy, I generally feel most vindicated in no longer having the faintest shred of envy — I am, of course, blessed to be still alive (as I write this!).
Equally so, there are ways all of us are inappropriately precious against this “living” fact; for example, taking things for granted.
That we live this life in precociousness is a blight on our competence otherwise — that for which we’re blessed and, via the thankfulness of service, we can also bless.
When we enter into a disrespecting sense of extravagance — the abuse of God’s wealthy provision — we undermine this competence.
Adding to our competence, alternatively, is a fundamental act of worship.
Competence – Our Greatest Living Defence
The useful matter of life itself is competence. It’s the ability to serve; to make of some real worth our living efforts — those for which, one day, we’ll be judged.
Judgment motivates us to grow our competence — the skills to live life — as does our thrill of just engaging in them.
But decadence spends what it has without thought, bankrolling credit, spending more than it can repay. It’s complicates our lives because it wastes when it could invest. We do not know when the Lord will call, “Pay up!”
Against Decadence We Pit Competence
Decadence can only get in the way of our love — that is, the acts of grace we sow into the lives around us.
Decadence is selfishness. But it’s beyond that. Selfishness can remain dormant in anyone. It doesn’t have to feature against love, though it often does.
Competence is an act against decadent thinking, if we’ll be aware of it in humility. Somehow it needs to be the objective.
Sowing into a Purpose We Can Believe In
This really is where life begins — again, or for the first time.
The chief question is, do we feel competent?
The test of such a question is the product of our focus; purpose driven or aimlessness and all variants between. Are there any excuses, really, for wasting time? Is it better to consider our time best always utilised, whether we work, rest or play? Each of these three must be purposed.
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Belief in God is verily tested by manifestation of what we do.
Purpose, then, is the sponsor of competence, and Doing is the servant engendering competence and repaying Purpose.
Existence, and what we do with it, is a matter of life and death; foolish are we when we don’t see this. God has an expectation of us that we’ll search for, and find, our purposes — no matter how little or large — and live at truth with them.
Finding our purpose or not, and sowing faithfully or not, is our basic act of worship (or idolatry). There’s a lot to be said for competence in the frame of worship.
© 2011 S. J. Wickham.
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