Sundown

This time of year always brings feelings of disappointment for me.

I’m a student right now, so the end of summer feels a little like the end of freedom. I go into every summer with lighter duties and loftier dreams than I carry during the school year, but when the sun sets on summer, I always seem to find that my dreams have been disappointed. “Wait, I wasn’t done with this summer yet!”

On a larger scale, when the sun sets on my life, I think I’ll still feel disappointed by how many unfulfilled dreams I carry. I believe in life after death—real, purposeful life in which we will get to work with God in His kingdom—but the brevity of this life still matters. I am and will be limited in my ability to help, shape, cultivate, contribute to, and love the people who are around me right now.

I feel sad about that, and I think that points to a few ideas.

1. God made me to work with Him in His kingdom, both now and eternally. I should want my actions to matter—in fact, they do matter, though sometimes not as much as I wish, or not in the ways I wish.
   
2. I tend to over-rate the importance of my dreams (for today, for this month, for my life, for my church, for God’s kingdom) coming true. This is God’s world. Whether or not I am successful in my work with Him, I am going to be okay, and His world is going to be okay.

It seems like there is a ditch we could slide into when we think about our limits. I think the ditch looks like this idea: My limitations are so great that anything I try to do will either fail or not matter in the grand scheme of things. It does not matter what I do.

Greek myth edition: Sisyphus did something that made the gods mad, so they cursed him with an eternal task: he must, every day, try to roll a boulder to the top of a mountain, get almost to the top, then watch it roll back down. His labor was difficult, eternal, and meaningless because he was under the thumb of the gods. Spiritual edition: God will do His work with or without me. I can roll a rock, or not. It doesn’t really matter.

We could react to that ditch-idea by refusing to admit that we have limits. That could look like saying something like this: “I didn’t accomplish my dreams for this summer because I just didn’t try hard enough. I could have, if I really had wanted to. I just don’t work hard enough, or manage my time enough, or get up early enough, or drink enough coffee, or have a good enough morning routine,” or or or or or....

If I believe that, I’ll drive myself into burnout, but at least I’ll have the comfort of believing that there’s some solution out there that would let me live without limits, if I could only find it.

The story of Sisyphus is hard on the soul. We’ll do a lot of things to avoid the grief of admitting that in so many ways, we cannot fulfill our hopes.

But I do have limits.

You do too.

That doesn’t mean the ditch-idea is true. Our efforts will not be as effective as we wish—but they will have an effect.

When we try, it matters. Often not as much as we wish, no. And when we try, our limitations get exposed, don’t they?

But then, we aren't human doings. We're human beings. And being doesn't depend on success.