Will This Matter in 10 Years?

"In the light of 100 years, will that little thing that annoyed you in traffic this morning matter? Will you even remember it in a month?" asked the speaker in chapel here at work today. One benefit of working for a Christian organization is hearing someone speak each morning about a Scripture passage. Our speaker today was looking at James 1:2.

His comment made me smile, because it was a close paraphrase of something my friend Jamie frequently said when we shared an apartment with a perennial kitchen disaster-making friend. Said roomie was rarely home, but occasionally she would appear, make a very involved meal for her fiancé, then disappear again. The resulting kitchen disaster would sit untouched for days. More than once Jamie and I gave in and did the dishes.

This irritated me to no end, but Jamie has a tolerance for people and their foibles that I can only aspire to. She'd sigh and say, "Will this matter in 10 years?"

I'd grind my teeth and say, "No. But it will matter in the morning when I still haven't read the six chapters of missions history for Dr. Smeeton's class!" Then we'd laugh, and I'd wash all the silverware that Jamie's OCD tendencies prevented her from touching, and she'd dry the dishes and put them away. The only aspect of that situation that still matters now—nearly 10 years later—is the friendship with Jamie that grew out of cleaning up multiple apartment disasters.

How many things do I get worked up about each day that will not matter in ten minutes, not to mention in 10 years and certainly in 100 years? There are plenty. The irritation that rises each Monday when I arrive home from work and see that once again the garbage man left my trash can in the middle of my driveway so I can't pull in. Little quirks we all have at home and work and church. The obsessive tendencies that everyone but me seems to have. The people who drive in the exit lane all the way to the end, then drive in the shoulder and cut in front of 500 cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic, who seem to think the rules of the road are for other people.

I could go on for years ... yet what do I want to be remembered for? For getting a barricade put in the end of the exit lane to make people obey traffic laws? Or for doing something that will matter in 100 years? Fighting something that makes God angry?

A lot of things vie for time and attention these days, but I am asking God to help me focus on 100 years from now. Some of these things are simple. I can stop complaining. I can express my gratitude for the life I have. I can find new ways to demonstrate God's love to the people in my life, which may sound small but is probably one of my biggest struggles.

Beyond that, I want to discover how to demonstrate God's love to the oppressed, the enslaved, the abused. I want to tell them that God hasn't forgotten them. That this wasn't His plan for the world. That He has a better plan, and in the meantime, He wants to take our pain, our brokenness, our weakness and turn them into something beautiful.

I am so thankful for the local Clapham crew, for people who have this same heart to reach out and do something that will matter in 10 years—or 100.

(Sorry if there are typos here. This was in my head, so I punched it out during a break before it ran away from me ... )