Christians United In Beaver County

I recently read a story about prisoners of war in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II that were being used as workers at a factory in Hungary. One day Allied air forces flew over and bombed the factory and blew it up. So now the prisoners who survived the attack had nowhere to work.

The Nazi soldiers had the prisoners take all the rubble of that bombed out factory and move it over into a nearby field. Once they were done with that, they had the prisoners pick up the same rubble, and move it back to where they started from. Once they were finished with that, they moved it back to the field. And that became the routine—day after day they moved the piles of rubble back and forth, back and forth from one place to the other. They were working hard, but their labor had absolutely no meaning or purpose to it.

A strange thing began to happen. The prisoners began to go crazy. Many of them began to throw themselves in front of the guards, trying to get shot—basically trying to commit suicide. And it wasn’t because they were prisoners of war. As bad as that was, at least they had some hope that one day they would be set free. But they realized that there was no point to the work they were doing. All their efforts were totally meaningless and purposeless. They realized that whether that rubble got moved back and forth or not, it just didn’t matter.

This story may be an extreme example, but it certainly bears out the fact that everyone wants their life to matter. They want to feel that their life counts for something purposeful, that it’s not just a waste of time. I dare say that nobody sets out to waste their life. Nobody says, “You know, I really hope my life counts for nothing. I’m going to work hard to waste it all.”

But as the years go by people come to fear that their life does not matter. Things have not turned out the way they had hoped or expected. They realize they made choices that have resulted in outcomes that are big disappointments, and caused even more problem. They want their life to matter, to count for something, but they fear that it doesn’t.

Let’s consider a key question as we face this fear of not mattering: What makes a person “matter?” What is it that makes a person’s life count, or have significance? In our world’s view significance is often determined by what we do. What have you achieved? What position do you have? How much power do you have? The answers to these questions are what our world uses to judge a person’s significance.

But God’s view is very different. In God’s view, significance comes not from what we do, but who we are. We do indeed matter in God’s eyes because first of all, we are his creation.

Psalm 139: 13-16 tells us that we are his marvelous creation, fearfully and wonderfully made, and that He was paying attention to us before we were even born.

What matters to God is not so much how great our achievements, or how high our position. Simply because we are his hand-knit creation, he values us, and therefore, we are the objects of his love. Eph. 2: 4,5 says, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”

Grace means that God gives us what we don’t deserve. We don’t deserve it, and we don’t earn it, but when we put our faith and trust in him, God gives us the assurance of sins forgiven, the gift of salvation. Jesus paid the price for this gift by sacrificing his life on the cross for us. And you don’t do that for someone you don’t care about, someone who doesn’t matter to you!

So when you get to feeling that your life doesn’t matter, that you have no significance in this world, let this truth sink in to your heart and mind: You do matter to God because you are his creation, the object of his love, and one for whom he gave his life. So go live your life with this reality motivating you to serve him. That’s a life that will truly make a difference!

This message is published in cooperation with Christians United in Beaver County.

Rev. David Muir, Pastor

Brodhead Christian Missionary Alliance Church,

Aliquippa

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