One phrase we use in our household is “use your Bigness to serve.” I don’t remember how we came up with it, but it was probably a long time ago, when it became obvious that big kids would prefer to lord it over littler siblings rather than serve them. God’s Kingdom is rather upside-down, compared to the world’s. As adults, we are learning to use our “Bigness:” every aspect of our power, our position, our privilege, however much we have of those things, to love God by protecting, loving, and serving others inside and outside of the household. The more a person has, the more he has available to give. Using the bigness to serve inside the household is usually hardest and most frequent. But it (thankfully) a safe place to (frequently) fail.
I argued with myself for a few minutes about whether to spuriously capitalize the word Bigness or not, and settled on capitalizing it — mostly as a symbol of being granted from God and not really earned in our own right. It is God who gives the seed for bread and the ability to live and serve at all.
Our family feels a lot like a meme generator training camp for adulthood with Jesus. It’s like running the “boring basic” footwork drills over and over again: making beds, learning those multiplication tables, cleaning up messes, learning not to scream, writing 3 point essays, so that the little bits of serving become muscle memory that will be built upon into the future. Over and over again each of us learns to pick the little thankless jobs. And in time, we will all come to see that Bigness is something we are born into, cultivate, and gain perspective on as we grow up.
The Engineer and I were both from safe, loving, intact families who ate around the table and generally enjoyed time together. We knew our grandparents and loved them and our heritage, explicit and implicit. We met in engineering school and graduated. We were able to find good jobs to pay off all of our student debt while we rented in a decent neighborhood. We’ve had access to all of our needs being met, including a deep and wide network of amazing Jesus-followers who surround us.
And so, much is required with all of this Bigness.
So then I get to decide: will I use by Bigness to build bigger barns for myself and my heirs? Will I use it to gain power in the world? How should I use the various aspects of my Bigness? What will I do with the things I’ve been granted to steward?
- energy
- freedom
- time
- income
- knowledge
- comings and goings
- health
Will I use my all to love and serve God and others? Here in my household? Nearby in my neighborhood? Far away across the globe? Those are the questions I ask myself and want the children to ask themselves as they ramp toward adulthood. I pray that the children would first, meet Jesus and respond to him; then, be better equipped to serve and less selfish than I was at age 17 when I left home.
The longer I walk with Jesus
The longer I walk with Jesus, the more I see that without God’s sustaining and restraining power, the world goes to heck in a handbasket really, really quickly. It takes about 4 seconds for my children to start bickering, and it only took one generation after the first act of sinful disobedience for murder to occur. What makes us think that we can live a single moment outside of submission to God and his ways? And the way of the world and the flesh are the be served, not to serve. And as soon as I rest in anything except Christ or take my foot off the pedal of the gospel in my life, there I am, wanting to be served instead of wanting to serve. That sobriety and alertness the apostles wrote about weren’t just for obvious sins, but for the subtle selfishness I struggle with daily.
Thankfully it only takes a moment to turn our hearts back to God, to honor him by asking the question, “How am I using my Bigness right now?”
Child #5 recently turned six.
He received a lovely birthday card from an amazing lady at church who sends every single kid a card on their birthday. He loves his yearly card and usually pays more attention to it than to any gift he ever receives. Yesterday, 2 year old little sister went into his room and found the birthday card, scintillating with glittery stickers and smiley faces and multicolored marker. It took her just a moment to start peeling the stickers off and to tear the card down its fold. A scream rang out from the boys’ bedroom. And then another. And then both children were screaming.
Once the toddler was calmed down, I turned to the six year old who was looking very upset. Yes, friend, I know that this card means a lot to you. And you mean an awful lot to God. But your sister is littler than you. So you sent her the message that she is less important to you than the nice card here. What should you have done with your Bigness?
“Pwotect her.”
Yes, friend, that is what you should have done instead of getting angry at her and hitting her. What are we going to do the next time? How are we going to plan ahead for the next time?
I’m hoping that by repeating these things over and over (and over and over) again, I myself will learn them completely and move toward a fuller life of loving and serving through my bigness. Only then do my kids even have a chance at using their Bigness for good.
I used to look forward to the general election.
It was exciting and interesting, to see what would happen on Super Tuesday and how those decisions rippled through real people’s lives. Like many of you this time around, I had trouble looking forward to it. Now I’m looking for a candidate who uses his Bigness to protect, love, and serve so I can joyfully cast my vote for policy that also allows (not necessarily mandates) that others at least consider the same. While it’s not the *only* thing I’m looking for, it is a pretty good indicator of a person’s relation to humanity in general.
I hope to inspire some of my children to public or NGO service. I didn’t grow up in a very political or patriotic household. The adults in my life who voted often communicated doing so in order to protect their way of life, instead of considering the good of the country as a whole. The subtle messages I received as a child were “do great things for yourself.” I don’t fault the loving adults in my life for these messages, it’s what they grew up with. Children closer to 1st generation immigrants are more inclined to feel and think this way in order to do better than the generation who decided to leave home and come to the US.
For me, there came an intersection of my values: if Jesus was all about others, then how can this family, this life, or my politics be all about me? Because that is pretty much how I voted in the first few elections I could legally vote in — to preserve my liberty and ability to do the things I wanted to do.
The very roots of the United States were established in the creed of equality of all men and a way forward together. If those with Bigness aren’t thinking about the meaning of those creeds and choose instead a liberty that guts others of a sense of dignity, power and corruption ensue. And that gutting can happen in a myriad of ways across the political spectrum.
I’m not ashamed to say
that it’s taken a long time for my politics to converge with my faith. Maybe it goes the other way for folks who were raised in homes geared toward public service. Either way, they have to converge to have the full effect of both. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t work if we are under the control of the Holy spirit. It’s a struggling and a working out of salvation: can I speak words and live a life with my children in a way that scales up and out into my community, into my state, the country, and across oceans? What a blessing it is that founding father democracy is an intentionally generous “light on a hill.”
But that’s enough words for now. Time to go do the things.
I would love to hear ways you have seen others use their Bigness to love, protect, and serve!