Pop Goes Perfection
If you grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons you might remember the commercial for a game called Perfection. In this game you had to “put the pieces into the slot, make the right selection, but be quick you’re racing the clock. POP! Goes perfection!” Basically, there was a loud timer clicking away as you tried to match the plastic pieces to their appropriately shaped cavity. If you didn’t finish your task on time a spring popped the game board up and your work was ruined as the pieces went flying out.
While this game was supposed to be fun, I think it acted as a primer for the way many of us live our lives today. We often feel this sense of impending dread as we try to live the perfect life right now. A songwriter I heard a while back put it this way, “I want the glory, I just don't want the work, I want the scars and the story, I don't want it to hurt.” It is a very human desire to want to live at the finish line as opposed to struggling through the race.
Our focus feels so limited. We feel doubt and demoralized because we only think about how much further we have to go to reach our goals. Often, it’s not even a personal goal; it’s because we feel like we need to play catch-up with someone else. When this happens, we must remember that God is not comparing you to anyone else. God does not place you on a ranking list of who is loved more and who is loved less. God loves and has done all the work necessary for you to be loved.
Even when we think that we are worthless Paul reminds of this in Ephesians 2:5, 8-10, “5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
You don’t need to worry when the world pops around you. God is already doing the work of making things perfect.