The Way to the Top

Once there was a facet who aspired to be world’s biggest diamond.

Once there was a telescope lens who thought he should be the object of the astronomer’s eye.

Once there was a cog who thought he was a factory.

And once there was a created being who said, “I will make myself like the Most High.” When he fell, he took the whole world with him.

You and I were made — fearfully and wonderfully made — to fill a particular role in God’s plans and purposes. God’s desire was always that we would ascend. Jesus came to bring “many sons to glory”, not to watch mankind grovel in dust and despair. But the Lord intended us to ascend to precisely the place he had prepared for us, not the ones to which our fallen hearts might naturally be inclined. When we have seated ourselves in the lowest place, the host will surely come and say, “Friend, move up higher”, but even in that glorious moment we would still be unwise to aspire to select our own seat. The seats in the kingdom are reserved for “those for whom it has been prepared by my Father”. We might still find ourselves acting in the presumption that characterized James and John the day their mother visited the Lord on their behalf. Seeking an honor because of its appeal to us leads only to disappointment — or maybe a cup we weren’t quite prepared to drink.

So many people today want to be something for which the Lord never designed them. I am not wanting to be unkind here, but we have all watched men fill forty-five minutes of platform time and sighed with relief when they finished: at no point was anyone in danger of accidentally being edified. They were trying to occupy a seat they were never assigned. We have all watched wives who assume the role of their husband and husbands who assume the role of their wives, bewildered to find their homes almost as unhappy as those of their unsaved neighbors. They are trying to fill seats they were never assigned. I’ve watched twenty-something Christian men quit job after job and jump from career to career because they found none sufficiently fulfilling, to the endless frustration of wives and parents who understood they simply needed to learn to make a living. Life offered them a wooden bench when they expected a La-Z-Boy recliner. The seat they want is not theirs to take, and they may waste a lifetime trying to find and fill it, when the one they have right now may offer opportunities to serve Christ they have never noticed.

We honor the Head of the Church to the greatest possible degree when each part of the body operates as he designed it. We honor our Creator to the greatest possible degree when we joyfully accept the package with which he brought us into the world and use each aspect of it for his glory. We honor the Master we claim to serve to the greatest possible degree when we model his humble heart in doing the jobs nobody else wants.

The highest place in the universe belongs to the one who was willing to take the lowest. Why would we imagine there is any other way to the top?