What Matters

Yesterday we attended the funeral for fallen soldier Matthew R. Vandegrift. The testimony of how he lived his life and the life of the parents who raised him echoed in my ears as I climbed into our car for a very quiet drive home. The morning was sad, but so filled with God. I was so humbled and grateful from the front seat of my car to have been a part of such an amazing ceremony where the main event of the day was Jesus saves, not a soldier is dead. The whole idea of the morning struck a question of how many people in that room really got what matters. This family did a tremendous job of sharing the risen Savior with the crowd and that matters. The idea of it brought me to my mental knees of how to live a life that shows what matters. Catch that…I don’t want to live a life that matters, because then it is about me…I want to live a life that SHOWS what and who matters.

In front of us a brand new white Audi TT moved in position to lead the way up the street. Temporary plates hung in the back window as my eyes rested on the sleek vehicle gliding up the way. It was a brilliant white and the leather seemed so perfect I could almost smell it from the front seat of my beat up Bonneville. Then as my eyes fell to the back of the car I was struck by something unexpected; the brilliant, silver Audi symbol on the back of the car was perfectly in place and underneath it…barely visible, unless you were very close an Ichthys (fish symbol). The air escaped my lungs, but I could barely take another breath in. Don’t get me wrong, the fact the person who owned this car was willing to stand out for what they believed in was admirable. But I couldn’t help wonder if they knew how they had just minimized the body of Christ by using a symbol of modern day Babylon to denigrate the representation of Christ. Then it dawned on me as a society we have so minimized God that He is just that, a symbol of something we believe in, but not big enough to stand out as something we would die for. We live in a society where we could scarcely believe someone would die for our freedom, because the gesture is not viewed as a grand one, but something that just doesn’t make sense. We have so minimized the God we serve that we can’t even fathom Him being bigger than what is right in front of our eyes. We can’t comprehend the sacrifice of God’s only son for our freedom, but what really matters is how shiny the car is, not the One who blessed us enough to buy the car in the first place. Whether the point was not to mess the backside of the car up with TWO big symbols, or to make sure everyone knew it really was an Audi seemed pointless to me. Why even put the symbol on there if you couldn’t see it? If God can’t be a bigger symbol on your car than the car symbol itself, what was the point?

What really matters? The life of Matthew matters and still does. I could go on forever regarding the ignorance of people who were bold enough to post messages under news articles about the loss of his life and how senseless it was, but what really matters is this: it isn’t about the price Matthew paid for our freedom today, but the price that was paid for his freedom for eternity. Whether YOU believe it as useless or senseless that your freedom has already been paid for doesn’t matter. It has, and there is no changing it. Leave your comments wherever you must. Spread your ignorance across the globe, but guess what…it doesn’t matter. Someday your comments as well as your useless perspective will be obliterated from the face of this earth and when you stand before the throne of the ONE WHO MATTERS, truth will arise. He is bigger and will remain bigger than anything you can imagine…yes even bigger than the Audi symbol on the back of a brand new beautiful car.