In a culture that idolizes fame, power, and material wealth, happiness and contentment via any other means is almost impossible to comprehend. When we act only out of a hope of personal gain or out of fear of accruing shame or guilt, then our misery is assured. The celebrities aren't happy, those who have attained the pinnacle of our society's definition of success, if judged by their rate of substance abuse, suicide, divorce, and other signs of personal and relational stress and dysfunction. How much less are the masses, ever in desperate pursuit of this so-called success, ever to be happy? Is life simply a meaningless striving before an infinite nothingness as the secular humanists would have us believe? Is there no other option but pointless misery and then death? Is there a way to fix things?
The good news is that it isn't yours to fix. Our society glorifies ownership as the highest good, but we were not made to be owners, but are rather stewards. Yes, we don't reap the glories of ownership but neither do we incur the stress, cost, and worry of being the big boss, the one who must pay or suffer when the market drops or disaster happens, the one left holding the bag when everything collapses. We are given a physical body, a personality, skills and talents and interests, relationships, and the material necessities to make it through each day and those necessary to accomplish whatever tasks that are required of us. Anything more is beyond our scope, interest, and abilities and reaching for it only leads to depression, burn out, pride, and ultimately failure and misery. 'Ye can be gods,' said the Serpent, and our forebears reached out and took the forbidden, and indeed we became gods: the gods of Ancient Greece and Rome, of Babylon and Canaan. Unhappy, wretched, unscrupulous, capricious, fallen gods.
Then God became Man, the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us. When man wanted to be God, the only remedy was for God to become Man. We face the same choice as those in that ancient garden: will we abide within our appointed sphere, content to 'work and keep it,' or will we reach for the forbidden and ruin it all? That ancient serpent promises happiness, our culture whispers the same, but of all those who have taken that fatal bite, none have yet tasted the promised nectar, finding only a bitter and wormy apple as a reward while their world collapses around them. Let it go, whatever it is. No material thing or human relationship is the answer to your problems or current misery. Only by letting go can we potentially keep it. Lose your life to find it, lose the world to inherit heaven.
Abraham trudged grimly up a hill, seemingly to destroy a miracle and decimate a promise, but up he went only to discover a greater miracle still. In giving up his son, he kept both the son and the promise. God gave up His son too, for us, but that Son was not spared at the last moment and we are the inheritors of that promise, the greatly blessed, though not of our own doing. We didn't pay the Price, for we aren't the Owners. We are called to shepherd Another's sheep, tend Another's vines, mind Another's store. Your children aren't yours, neither is your body, your house, your car, your bank account. You are born with nothing and nothing follows you beyond the grave, just your own naked soul which will one day give an account of how you used all that was given into your keeping. Will you find a proud and smiling Father on that Day, or a grim and severe Master, disappointed in your poor stewardship?
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