Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch. And this summer, we're doing something a little unique as I do a little traveling. I'm having some of my friends guest host episodes that I have produced.

I could not be more excited for you to hear what they have to say, and today's episode is no exception. You're gonna love it. Hey. I'm Jamie Hewitt. And this week, we're gonna be asking the question, are our best days behind us?

This is drawn from an article in The Atlantic by Amogh Dimri titled The Long Goodbye to College. And the context for that is it's written by somebody who recently graduated from Columbia University, and they are thinking back a year later to their graduation to really just graduation as a whole. And what first stood out to me about it is just the overall tone of sadness and despair in the article. It was a nostalgic longing looking back to the time of college and an apprehensive look forward to what comes after that. Within the article, the author says that if you ask any recent graduate, what they tell you is that their head feels heaviest right after they take off the graduation cap.

They're saying that graduation is hard because the months leading up to it are filled with unexpected uncertainty and anxiety for what is going to come after. Real life and the responsibilities that come with it are kinda seen as something to avoid. The author talking about their own graduation says that when they thought about it, it was the inevitable and dreaded start to their own adulthood. And many people, they say, therefore, try to avoid that, and they will go to grad school. And the author says that that may buy them two or three years, but in the end, graduation still comes.

And so when the author is talking about their own experience, they say that that moment forced them to confront the question, what is next for me? And when they did that, they said they didn't have an answer, and they said and that led me to mourn the loss of my boyhood. And I think for all of us, the reality is that a lack of purpose always leads us to despair. When we don't know where our life is going, it is natural to wander and to wonder what we should do next. And I think you hear that through this article, but I don't think that that's the way it's supposed to be, although the Bible agrees with how we get there.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon, one of the greatest, wealthiest kings who have ever lived, will say that he looked back at his life, what he had, and what he accomplished. And in the end, it was all vanity and a chasing after the wind. And that's because everything that we do, however successful we may be in the end, it is meaningless unless it is tied and connected to God. And God is always moving forward. If you go back to the beginning of his story in Genesis one, he makes a good world.

And then in Genesis two, he puts a garden into that. And from that garden flow his blessing, his presence, his abundance to the rest of the world, and mankind, humans are invited into that story with him. They're placed into the garden to cultivate it, to grow it, to be fruitful, to multiply, and to expand to the whole of the earth. And even when they break that and the whole story goes off script, God reinvites them back in through Abraham. And he says, Abraham, I'm gonna restore blessing to you, my presence, my abundance to you, but also you are gonna be a blessing, and all of the families of the earth are gonna be blessed through you.

That purpose is the purpose that is meant to give our life meaning and direction. And that's why Paul will say in Ephesians two, you and I are God's workmanship created in Christ for good deeds prepared beforehand by God that we might walk in them. Being connected to God, being a part of his purpose and his plan is what gives our life meaning and direction. And it's not only just the big things because in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul will also say, whatever you do, whether you eat or whether you drink, do all things to the glory of God. Even the ordinary and mundane things in our life can be beautiful and meaningful and purposeful as long as they're connected to God.

So we come back to that first question. Are our best days really behind us? And I think my answer would be, if we are not connected to God through Jesus, then maybe. Maybe our best days really are behind us, but I don't think that we have to settle for that. We can have, and we're created for more.

If we are connected meaningfully to God, then we can know that every day of our life, everything that we do has purpose and meaning. And so if you are listening to this or watching this and you're reflecting back and thinking about your life and you're saying, you know, I do tend to think that my best days maybe were behind me. I wanna encourage you to consider, have you really thought about the invitation that Jesus gives to you to trust him? And if you have said that you're a Christian, my question would be, have maybe you fallen off a little bit and lost track of the gospel in your life? Here's the reality.

God is and has always been on the move. The question for you and I is, are we on the move with him, or are we just sitting there looking back at what was? You and I can have the confidence if we trust in Jesus to know that everything we do, however big, however small, is purposeful and meaningful as long as it's connected to him. We don't have to despair. Hey.

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Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!