Your Life is Not Your Own
3:40 PM
My wife has a simple lesson she likes to teach me. Whenever
I am swamped by the wants and needs of three young children and wish, either
with language or body language, to simply
have some time alone to do what I want she often tenderly reminds,
“Your life is not your own.”
As applicable as this phrase is to a beleaguered parent, it
is absolutely and eternally true. Paul explained to the Corinthians, “For ye
are a bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your
spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor 6:20; see also 1 Cor 7:23). In other words, we
do not own the life that we live. As much as we love to claim independence and
free agency, we do not live independent of the world around us or the God above
us and our agency, although ours, was
not free from a price and is not free
from consequences (in fact, the term “free agency” is not mentioned anywhere in
scriptures.)
Rather, our life belongs to Him who created and redeemed all life. Peter taught that our life was
purchased, not with money, but “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot.” Think of it, the whole motif of animal
sacrifice in the Old Testament and the pinnacle event of Atonement in the New
Testament should, at the very least, teach us that redemption and eternal life
were not cheap gifts to give. Your breath, your body, your mind and heart, your
soul, and your soul’s final home were purchased in the currency of perfect
blood given by a perfect person.
This last summer we took our family to see an outdoor theater production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. We all loved the play and were only mildly annoyed by our inability to get “Jacob! Jacob and Sons!” out of our heads. I’ve always loved how Joseph perseveres through trials and yet, through his faithfulness, rises to be a prince in a position to save his family.
However, as I read it this last time I saw a different, deeper story couched among all the details—a story of a brother, beloved and chosen by his father and yet hated and abused by those who should have been his friends, sold for 30 pieces of silver as a slave, imprisoned by a local governor, forgotten, only to rise as a prince with power to save his family who would come to him, bow before him, and reap the benefits of his struggles and perseverance. Joseph spoke for himself and also for someone who would follow that same pattern on a much grander scale, “God did send me before you to preserve life . . . and thou shalt dwell be near unto me . . . and there will I nourish thee” (Gen 45: 5, 10-11).
More than a thousand years later, Jesus Christ became “He
that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he
comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the
light of truth” (D&C 88:6). Just as Joseph could not have saved his family
were it not for his trials, so too did Christ submit so that He could, through
his travail, purchase us and everything that comes with us.
Thus, our life is not our own. Although it was given to us a gift and, as with any gift, we can use or abuse it as we choose we will never be able to shake the feeling that this life, this gift, means something more to God and should mean something more to us.
Do you do anything differently because you already recognize this truth? If not, what would you do differently because of it?
Thus, our life is not our own. Although it was given to us a gift and, as with any gift, we can use or abuse it as we choose we will never be able to shake the feeling that this life, this gift, means something more to God and should mean something more to us.
Do you do anything differently because you already recognize this truth? If not, what would you do differently because of it?
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