The Back Porch

If the sky is the limit, what do you reach for?

That question tore my mind apart. More appropriately, I tore my own mind apart trying to answer it.

I can’t quite be sure when it was, but at some point in my life I had a breakthrough. I realized that essentially I had never come across something I couldn’t learn very easily and naturally. Things just seemed to ‘click’.

For much longer than I can remember (I can only remember about 2 years back), I had teachers and people around me who said that I could do “x” if only I applied myself. I would be sitting in a math class and make some kind of abstract and generally absurd argument based on a really extended concept of logic and my teacher would say, “You should major in math when you get to college. You could really go places with it. But first you have to learn how to do your homework.”

But I don’t want to go anywhere with math. The only stuff I cared to make up in math was completely abstract, and almost certainly impossible to apply to the real world. It was useless.

I heard the same thing in my history classes and in my science classes and in my English classes. But I didn’t really want to do any of those things. I wanted my life to matter. More than that, I wanted it to matter in a real and visible way. But at the same time I wanted it in a strangely invisible way.

So what do you do when you can do anything?

Let’s say, purely hypothetically, that you can do anything through Christ who strengthens you (Philippians 4:13). What do you do with that kind of power? If God has your back, you can reach the sky. But what will you do when you get there?

This is perhaps an overly simplistic attitude, but perhaps if you can reach as high as you want, then maybe you’re reaching the wrong direction.

Right before Philippians 4:13 is Philippians 4, 11 and 12. A real shock. Anyway, in those verses, Paul says that he’s not talking about gifts he has received because he needs more. He says God has taught him to be content whether in need or with plenty. Whether starving or feasting, God has shown him the secret of contentment.

So Paul is saying he can do all things through Christ whether he is at the top of the world, or whether he can’t even reach the top of his own head.

Accomplishment, wealth, and prosperity were not his goal.

So what was Paul reaching for?

People.

If you can’t reach any higher, try reaching right next to you instead.

Keep it real, folks.

LoPez