Life on Loan

A few months ago, my Mom said something to me (or about me) that resonated deeply. As a part of a family birthday tradition, my Mother blessed me with some words of encouragement and appreciation.. Basically, what she said is that from a young age, and even when I was still in my Mom’s tummy, they knew I would be special. You see, while I wasn’t a part of my parent’s immediate plans, I was a part of God’s…I was for all intensive purposes a surprise. What she went on to say next, and what I viewed as being so profound was, “…we always viewed Chris as being on loan to us from God.” Maybe I’m prodding too deeply into the circumstances of my seemingly accidental conception, but viewing my life as a precious resource made me consider life on loan, I mean if I’m on loan to my parents…I’m pretty sure I’m on loan to myself too.

A part of me understands more about myself and my life, knowing that I was not the result of my parent’s family plans…but God’s eternal plans. Being “on purpose”, means a lot. Furthermore, being owned and loaned by someone else makes the possessive vocabulary in my life quickly vanish…what is “mine” anyways?

You see, my Mom’s view of me as her child as taught me something about my view of my life here on earth. Not only, is my life on loan to her as my mother, but its on loan to me. I can take no credit for what I am. I certainly had no role in drafting up the blue prints for humanity, and neither did I have a part in writing the script for time and history…all that I have really done is been invited in on the action. God handed each of us life, its his.

Each day provides an interesting intersection of our lives, at the drop of a hat our whole world’s are so easily disrupted, it goes both ways, good and bad. We could fall in love, we could lose a loved one; we could be stricken with terrible disease, or find great fortune. Life is stupidly delicate when you really consider it, which is why “being on loan” is a really profound concept. None of what I have is mine, believing in the sovereignty of God, means that every day, minute, and hour is on loan…it means that our time here is precious, and ultimately will be accounted for. After all, a loan gets repaid.

When something is borrowed and we have proper reverence for the true owner of the borrowed item, a shift occurs in our perception (mine becomes yours). Think for a minute of a teenager who borrows his dad’s sports car. The young driver knows that if he wrecks the car there will be hell to pay. On the other hand, if he is careful with what he’s been given and handles the car knowing he’ll give it back, he’ll get to experience great excitement and joy. Simply being lent a resource will not do, you must actually acknowledge the rightful owner, otherwise there is a detachment which allows self-indulgence and self-absorption to prevail. If things are kept in the proper perspective and we remain cognoscente of the true owner of our lives, our primary preoccupation becomes not that of self gratification but rather good stewardship. We stop trying to exploit that which we have been lent, and we start viewing our lives as an opportunity to enjoy and make good with that which we have been afforded.

Not only are our lives on loan to us, but we’re on loan to each other. The pool of assets which we are lent extends far past our lives in an immediate sense. Time, money, and relationships; all people, places, and things; its all borrowed and when we view it as such we start to become good accountants of it all.

If someone you loved handed you $100 and said, “I want you to use this to show me how you love me.” What would you do? Flowers, an elaborate meal, maybe tickets to a concert…there are a lot of creative options, there are lots of ways to put the money to good use. However, without a relationship with the lender, how could you possibly successfully achieve the objective with the $100? The deeper the love and closer the relationship, the more time and energy we would spend carefully planning out the $100 to the penny. Imagine getting to tell the person the story of how you used the resource they gave you to convey your love “…and then I spent a quarter playing your favorite song on a juke box, because I know how much you love it when people dance.” Its not about money, but think about being loved and loving that way…where we creatively and purposefully seek opportunities to invest and invest everything.

The covenants of our lending agreement with Christ are loose, they give us free reign to use what we have in infinite ways, but to be good stewards we have to be good lovers of God. Its not about being religious, its not about being good, its about being on purpose with how we invest (our purpose is loving Christ and glorifying him).

Christ said that “he who loses his life shall find it, and he who keeps his life shall lose it.” This has nothing to do with being alive or dead, but rather, being on loan. What Christ’s statement reflects, is a life sold out; a life that has handed over the total equity stake. It is the act of taking inventory of our lives and assigning God as the right full owner to it all, and in doing so we are given a piece of life in Christ. This is the deal of the century, we trade the temporary and fleeting elements of life on earth in exchange for a stake in eternity.

Going back to the $100 analogy, think that one day we will be able to give an account for our lives. If we had to hand back our friendships, our careers, our free time, our money, our marriages, our children, our homes, our everything and show how we used it all to creatively express our love for God who lent it all to us, how would we do?

We may come up short on the $100, we may spend it all, but God expects as to use it. When we hand it all back to him, we will not say “Here’s what is yours.” Do you think God needs us to affirm him as the rightful stakeholder in all of time and creation? he doesn’t (reference the parable of the talents). Rather, when we say, “Here is what I’ve done with what you gave me, because I love you.”

If our response to being loved and love itself are the primary motivations for everything we do, how should everything we do change?

Balancing my life “portfolio”,
CP