I realized the other day that it has almost been four years since I graduated from Bible college. In other words, I’ve spent as much time out of college as I did in it. Crazy how time flies.
As time moves on, you notice that people do too. Every season of life has its set of people that you befriend or interact with. And then, before you know it, you’re in a different season with new people, new circumstances, and new challenges. But you have the same God. You discover more and more how He truly is the friend who never goes anywhere.
Sometimes I get random memories of a person I used to know, and I wonder, “What ever happened to that person?” Good thing there’s social media, right? You can find almost anyone on there.
You know how it goes. You type in the person’s name, the results show, you tap on the first or second option, and then comes the reveal. You look at their profile for a whole two seconds before you exclaim, “Oof! They got fat!” or “Yikes, they’ve sure changed,” or “Ha! They haven’t changed a bit.”
Or how about the movie actors from your childhood? Did you ever wonder what happened to those actors? How did their life turn out? Good thing you have Safari. You do a quick investigation (like you did on social media), and BOOM results. Same kind of reaction: “Wow! They’ve gotten old.”
“All people go a different direction." That is something my grandfather often told me. People make their own decisions. They go [this] way and [that] way and they “don’t even ask our permission,” grandpa used to joke.
I’ve always been fascinated by people’s life stories and where they ended up. “Some people dream of being a pilot or police officer when they’re kids. It’s all they ever wanted to be. And that’s what they end up doing their whole life.” For most people, however, the path goes [this] way and [that} way. It’s a recipe with a lot of ingredients.
God uses people in different ways and in different times. Probably the passage of Scripture that jumps to your mind comes from the story of Esther. Her uncle Mordecai told her, “And who knows? That you are here for such a time as this?” God had plans for Esther, but He also used Mordecai in the preservation of the Jews. A lot more people were involved than we think about.
Scripture is just full of individuals. For many of them, God chose to have their name mentioned and really zoom in on their lives. But there’s a whole lot more folks in the Bible who were just part of a tribe or assembly. They were in a bigger picture, each had a role, but they would not have the roles of Moses, David, Peter, or Paul. The Bible just doesn’t tell us much of anything about all the others. And yet, we know they lived lives. We know some of them feared God and did great things for Him.
Whenever I read the New Testament, especially, I sometimes see names that get referenced, but then the text just moves on. Hold on a minute! What ever happened to that person? What path did God lead them on? What people did they reach? Did they get martyred? Did they die heroically?
Church history sometimes sheds a little bit of light on these questions, but, overall, we just won’t know in this life. So, did God mean to leave people out?
Maybe a subtle theme from Scripture is that there will always be believers who don’t get mentioned. And yet, our Father in Heaven and His holy angels witness all our words and deeds in this life. Be sure of this: No work done for God is ever unseen or unrewarded.
The body of Christ consists of an unbelievable number of components. Sometimes we don’t think about it in that way, but we really should. Just picture our human anatomy for a second. What do you see? Well, you see the outer. You don’t see the inner. And YET, there is an unbelievable amount of activity going on inside the body. And if all the components of the body are doing their part, the body thrives.
Another way of saying it is that if every believer is using their spiritual gift(s), great things are happening. Spotlight or no spotlight. Acknowledgment or no acknowledgment. There are great things happening, and God is being glorified.
It’s fun to see where people end up. But there’s an even more important question than asking, “Whatever happened to that person?” It’s asking ourselves, “Where is this person going?”
-CH
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