I love the way Rick Warren’s book Purpose Driven Life begins.  He says ‘It’s not about you’. It reminds us that there is a much larger story going on around us, one that we are called up to, that involves much more than just our day to day strivings.  It is a story of a greater purpose, of a transcendent cause that is much bigger than we are.

And yet, on another level, I have been haunted by that phrase.  Way back, before all of this drivenness that we possess, the Bible says that God created us.  Why?  Was he lacking something?  Did he need us to ‘help’ him out?   Was he lonely; was the fellowship of the Trinity not enough?  Or was he maybe just bored, and man was his new toy.  Perhaps we are just here to be manipulated for his personal enjoyment.

By definition, God is complete. He lacks nothing.  He needs nothing.  The Trinity is perfect as it is, without adding or subtracting anything.  As such, none of the above thoughts really hold water.  God doesn’t need us, not in the grand scale of things.  Neither are we his entertainment for the night.

As I asked this question the other night to some friends, one replied that God created us because he is, in his very nature, creative.  We are a natural outpouring of who he is.  But he is also much more than that.  John tells us that God is love (1 John 4:16).   And we, as his creation, are the objects of that love. 

It explains so much.  It explains his patience with us.  It explains his discipline.  So much of what Jesus said begins to come to light, things like ‘I have come that [you] may have life, and have it to the full’ (John 10:10), or his claim that he was here to ‘release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’ (Luke 4:18,19).  And so much of what he did: ‘The son of man must suffer … and he must be killed’ (Luke 9:22).  In fact, it was Jesus himself that explained the motives:  ‘For God so loved the world’ (John 3:16).

Don’t know how I missed it before.  It is all about us.  It has always been about us. All of the sacrifice, the rescue, the Word, the reward, it is all for us.  No wonder Jesus was so frustrated when we would worry about our futures, or our finances, or our failures.  He was trying to convince us that it was about us; that God is for us!

To the King,

David