Life as It Is Meant to Be

[Guest Post by Hannah Anderson – I met Hannah through my friend Lisa Velthouse, founding editor of PickYourPortion.com. I always appreciating meeting new people through others. It excites me even more when I found out that they are also (shocker) a writer! Please welcome Hannah who writes with grace and glory — while reminding us what life as it is meant to be, looks like!]

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”—C. S. Lewis

One summer my husband, Nathan, and I drove from Seattle to Los Angeles on Highway 101. We had both been raised in the eastern United States, more at home in the rolling Appalachians than anywhere else, but we were visiting friends in Seattle and decided to drive down the Pacific coast before flying out of LA.

We had been on the road only a few hours when, somewhere in Oregon, we crested a bend and I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time. I yelled at Nathan to stop the car, quickly jumped out, and ran to a short length of beach. I stood there taking it all in — the waves pounding against the rocky coast, the rough winds whipping my helpless hair, the gulls crying as they somersaulted above the water, and the salt sea biting at my upturned face.

And I felt very small.

Like David, I couldn’t help but think, “What is man that you are mindful of him? And the son of man that you care for him?”

And I wondered, How does one person make any difference in all this?

The fear that our lives lack significance, that we are merely specks of dust floating in the massive cosmos, can easily spark the search for identity.

Add to this the fact that we must devote vast amounts of time on the basics of daily life (I once calculated that in my lifetime I will prepare nearly 50,000 meals for my family), and it’s a wonder we all don’t run off to exotic places in search of ourselves!

This fear drives some women on a never-ending pursuit of success and perfection. From the fast-paced executive always scrambling for the next deal to the tiger mom bent on shaping her child into a future Supreme Court justice, we are hounded by the thought that our existence will somehow be worthless unless we achieve quantifiable success.

For others, this same fear causes them to retreat into their own zone of comfort and hide from the greater world, content to be a big fish in a small pond if it means avoiding the constant reminders of their limitations and irrelevance.

And yet the deeper magic is that no matter how small we may feel — no matter how small we actually may be — we are not insignificant. We are not lost in the grand cosmos.

We do matter.

But it’s not because of anything we’ve done; it’s because of something God did back at the beginning.

Genesis describes the first moments of human existence like this: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in Our image, after our likeness . . .’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them . . . .”

Unlike the rest of creation, as majestic and glorious as it is, only men and women are made in the image of God.

Only we have the breath, the very spirit of God, flowing in our earthly lungs; only we can be truly called His children.

And this is why your life is significant.

It’s not because of what you accomplish or how many people you influence. Your life is significant because when God created you, He “crowned you with glory and honor” by making you like Himself. So that as you walk and talk and live and move — and prepare those 50,000 meals — your very existence, your life itself, reflects and represents Him on this earth.

This is where you must find identity; you must find it in God’s image. Because you are made in God’s image, you exist to reflect and represent Him on this earth. Because you are made in God’s image, you are made to proclaim what He is like by doing what He does.

Because you are made in God’s image, you are made for glory.

Hannah Anderson lives with her husband and three children in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and is the author of Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God’s Image (Moody, 2014). You can connect with her at her blog sometimesalight.com on Twitter @sometimesalight.