I’m writing just after the funeral of President Jimmy Carter. There was a Christian who really made a difference in the world. It makes me wonder what I’ve achieved in comparison.

I spent a good part of my life in 1990 and 1991 writing my doctoral dissertation. It explored cognitive dissonance and learning in religious studies. My work is full of statistics using discriminant analysis employing the stepwise method with Wilks’s lambda. Thirty-five years later I’m not sure what that sentence means. I’m proud of my accomplishment, though I doubt I really made an advancement in human knowledge.

Maybe it’s a matter of age, but I’ve reached the point where I have to admit I’ve achieved about what I’m going to achieve in life. I’m not going to be like Grandma Moses who took up painting at 78 and whose works now hang in famous galleries everywhere. I take comfort, though, in the knowledge that God won’t ask me why I wasn’t a Jimmy Carter or Grandma Moses. Maybe it will be like this:

God:     Were you who you were supposed to be?
Me:     Who was I supposed to be, Lord?
God:     I told you plainly enough: “do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). “Open your hand to the poor and needy” (Deuteronomy 15:11).
Me:    Yes, Lord, but I don’t think I did that as well as I could have.
God:    I know that. Why do you think I sent my Son to take flesh, live, die, and rise for you?

Read Matthew 25:31-40 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne