The Means Are the Ends

Every now and then God shows me through a circumstance that He cares about even the littlest things that worry me. But if we are here with the single purpose of knowing Him, then why do we even question if our cares are too small or if our actions are insignificant? God is a God of relationships, which means He cares about us. Yet it is not the car accident or the disappointment or the test grades that He cares about, so much as it is the way that we handle those things that come our way.

Sometimes we only focus on the end goal of things. We want our questions to be answered. We want our plans to succeed. We want to know where we'll be next year or the year after. We look ahead to the results and forget the importance of the process.

***

I remember when I was a kid and my dad and I were playing through Donkey Kong Country (a process we go through almost every year). It's the Super-Nintendo one where one person can play Donkey and the other Diddy (the lesser-known monkey with a red shirt and a ball-cap). If one character dies, then the other player takes over. I am always Diddy and my dad is always Donkey. One day, we reached a particularly difficult level where orangutans were throwing barrels at us and causing all kinds of havoc. We had to go to sleep defeated that night, and we decided we would beat it the following night when my dad came home from work. The next day, while my dad was gone, I turned on the game and played both Diddy and Donkey. I played through that level again and again and again. Eventually, I beat the level and the primates did a happy dance. I was so proud. I couldn’t wait to tell my dad. When he came home, I told him I had been playing all day and that I had moved us on to the next level. 
 

But his reaction wasn’t what I had expected. He frowned and said, “I was looking forward to playing that with you.”

***

It was then that I realized that the means were actually the ends. In other words, we weren’t playing the game to win. We weren’t pushing buttons to advance to the next level and the next level. We were playing the game in order to be together. This is how I see my relationship with God.

Oswald Chambers puts it this way: "God is not working toward a particular finish--His purpose is the process itself...His purpose is for this very minute, not sometime in the future. We have nothing to do with what will follow our obedience, and we are wrong to concern ourselves with it. What people call preparation, God sees as the goal itself...If we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious."

Everything we experience is an opportunity to be in relationship with our Creator right now.

The means are the ends. God cares about every little thing because every little thing is about one big thing--living in relationship with Him.

Don't get ahead of God. He's waiting for you right where you are.