Just A Nobody

One of the difficult parts of becoming a disciple of Jesus is that everything you've ever learned about how life works is turned upside-down. Instead of getting to the front of the line, your goal is getting to the back. Instead of getting to the seat of honor, your goal is the lowest seat. Instead of walking your obligatory mile, you seek to walk two. Instead of becoming somebody, we should be happy to be a nobody.

In Romans chapter 4 Paul discusses this situation in the life of Abraham.

Romans 4:17 MSG

"We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing."

Abraham was a nobody that was living out in the wilderness, in a tent, because he had dedicated his life simply to following God. Those of us in the family of God are regarded as children of Abraham, a nobody, and God was satisfied that in his life being a nobody was enough. Being sexually impotent in his old age was enough for God to call something out of nothing. Enough because God-stories are always played out through the lives of nobodies. And Abraham was satisfied to believe and obey.

What are you? What can we be anyway? Significance, as the world defines it, is a fickle mirage. Successes, on the world's scorecard, are likely to be blown away in the winds of time; nothing that lasts.

The meek inherit the earth.

--Ben