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 in today's episode, we're asking the question, is your genius going to waste? This is prompted by a really interesting article I read this week in the New York Times about a group of people, a group of friends who for seven years lived in a shopping mall totally undetected.

K. Here's the story. A mall was being built in a gentrifying neighborhood, a neighborhood that was kind of going from old and urban to rapidly younger and a little more suburban. And they were building the building that was going to become the shopping mall when a particular artist noticed that the design of the building created a kind of pocket space, an unused space that you could access. And so this artist decided with a group of friends to see how long, you could inhabit that space without being noticed.

This story, by the way, is being turned into a documentary. And, the answer, I guess, is seven years. Now when I say they lived in this space, you just understand what I mean. They brought a couch up there. They had cooking equipment up there, a TV, a PlayStation.

Okay. They were literally carrying they even built a cinder block wall to divide rooms in the space. Okay. A lot is happening in this space in the mall where I think a group of people were living. And they wanted to just see, could they do it?

And they wanted to also, I guess, make a commentary on gentrification and how it displaces people. And but I'm not as interested in that as I am in this. Is there any limit to what people can do when they put their mind to it? Seven years living in a shopping mall just to see if they could get away with it is the whole is a hilarious way to spend almost a decade of your life. And it goes to show, if you put in the work, then you, I guess, can accomplish a lot and maybe get away with anything, including living in a mall.

It's it's a kind of a funny story, but then also kind of a heartbreaking story because these people take all their ingenuity, all their creativity, and to be honest, waste it on seven years of living in a mall. They weren't living there because it was a great place to live or because they were benefiting themselves or anyone else. They were doing it as a stunt. And it makes me wonder what the same group of people could have done with seven years of actually trying to benefit the world. But, of course, that's true for most of us, isn't it?

The reality is that God made us to create. He made us to shape the world and have dominion over it. In the book of Genesis chapter one, God looks over all that he's made, says that it's good, and then gives it to people. He tells us to to shape and create, to build. As I I've heard said many times, the Bible begins in a garden but ends in a city.

God had in mind human progress. We were made to accomplish, made to create, but so often we use that in meaningless ways. I think about, for example, the Tower Of Babel story in Genesis 11 where people are coming together to do what God made them do to to to do, to shape, to build, to create, to collaborate, but they're doing it for some stupid reason. Hey. Maybe if we build a tower to the sky, we can be like God, which, of course, makes no sense and is a complete waste of human potential.

The writer of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon, tells us in chapter one that so much of life is vanity. It's it's a waste of time. It's doing things that in the end don't matter. And I want you to realize that Jesus doesn't just save us from hell and God's judgment. He saves us from a life of wasted potential, from a life of meaninglessness, not the least of which is he calls us into his kingdom, into his church, capital c church, and calls us to get the gospel out to the nations.

He tells us in Philippians two that God has given us gifts, but the whole point of gifts, of our creativity, of our skills, of our of our wiring is to serve other people, to make their lives better, to bring them closer to God into and not out of the kingdom that Jesus is building. The world itself, according to Paul in Romans eight, is crying out for redemption, longing to be made new, and it's waiting for the day that Jesus returns. But, of course, the Jesus it's waiting for is the one who in the book of Revelation says he is making all things new. He isn't waiting to the end. He's doing it now and will bring it to conclusion in the end, and he's inviting us to be part of it.

Listen. If you look at your life, how much mall living, quote, unquote, have you been doing? How much time are you and I wasting on things that aren't about building the kingdom? And I don't mean to imply we can't rest or relax, but, sneaking cinder blocks up into a space in the mall is neither restful or relaxing. It's hard work.

It's just hard work for no apparent reason. You and I can take a massive step forward in our own faith and our blessing to the larger world by asking God to use our creativity for his purposes and not for the silly games that we come up with in our heads. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of wake up look up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

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