We Must Give Our Lives More Meaning
Have you ever watched a bear begging for peanuts at the zoo? Have you observed the endless pacing back and forth of the caged tiger? Have you ever wondered what the monkeys think about as they see us crowded around their cage while they go through their antics? Surely we are impressed with the futility of their existence. How sad to all day long to wait for someone to throw a peanut. What a waste of good time to spend it pacing back and forth, or swinging from one trapeze bar to another. Some of the things the monkey does look like fun, but it would certainly become boring if we spent a lifetime doing it.
We wonder if God doesn't view the average man's existence much the same as we do the animals. How foolish our running to and fro must appear to Him. Our jammed freeways proceeding at snails pace look like tiny ants in our own eyes from an airplane. From God's vantage point we are small indeed, and many of our actions must appear like the fruitless pacing of the caged tiger. God's purpose is to fill this earth with His glory. Right now few people ever give Him a thought, much less glorify His Name.
We must give our lives more meaning. That is the difference between man and the animal. The animal is unable to rise above his mundane existence. He only thinks of satisfying his own needs. He is really no different whether he is in the wilds of Africa or at the city zoo. Food is always on his mind. He lives to eat. Many people are like that too. But the difference is, we can rise above the animal level. As we look around us we find that many, in fact most of the human race, are still operating at the animal level. Jesus plainly taught us saying, `Take no thought, saying, what shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or Wherewithal shall we be clothed? Is not the life more than food and the body more than the garment? Look at the birds in the sky, they do not sow nor do they reap or gather crops into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? Consider the lilies of the field how they grow they neither toil nor spin.' (Matt.6:25-28)
The Gentiles haven't changed since Christ's day. Swanky restaurants, gourmet cookbooks, African fashions etc. all exist to cater to man's thoughts of eating, drinking and what he will wear. Paul tells us, `Set your affection on things above, not things on the earth.' He is saying the same thing Jesus declared: `So seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you' (Matt.6:33-34).
It is impossible to seek first the kingdom of God while thinking about food, clothing, sports, politics, money and such-like. Paul was a tent- maker, so was the man sitting next to him. Paul's head was in the clouds, for he was thinking about his Lord. The other man's head was in his stomach as he was thinking about what he was going to have for supper. Both men worked all day, both men ate supper: we should not have been able to tell the two men apart by just walking past their shop. One was a saint and one was an `animal.' One will be forever with Christ in the Kingdom, the other will sleep a perpetual sleep and not awake. Again, one is a saint and one is an animal. We are now deciding what we will be for eternity.
Bro. Moses Komanya (Kidatu, Tanzania.)
