Many people applaud how seriously I take my endeavors. But if I’m honest with you, I struggle with it.
There are many times where I struggle to hold my life with open hands. I fight and wrestle to make my dreams become a reality because I hold them within high regards. This is why I get anxious with my busyness and workload—I take it too seriously.
But I know that if I zoom out and view my dreams from a godly perspective, I’ll see that my efforts and dreams aren’t as important as I think they are.
This is a tough pill to swallow. So much of us wants to resist this truth. Yet, in our core, we know this is true: our life isn’t as important as we think it is.
In the Bible, James writes that our life is a vapor. It is here and then it is gone. Some people perceive that as reason to party. Others want to make their vapor mean something.
But how we should really interpret this truth is that we shouldn’t take matters of our life too seriously—not as if they are matters of utmost importance.
While we want to reject this truth, there is so much freedom behind this idea.
This means we don’t have to obsess about certain parts of our life. This means we have the freedom to mess up or take another road. This means we can hit the do-over button or get started with something new, something exciting.
The key to living with meaning and joy is to live with open hands.
This idea of living life with open hands has been saving me recently. There are times when I take article writing and matters of my business too seriously—as if I have to get them done no matter what.
Yet, God doesn’t call us to elevate these matters to such importance. Instead, He calls us to trust His activity in these matters. He calls us to open our hands and relinquish our control so that we can live meaningfully and He can be glorified in our activities.
Living with open hands is a foreign concept to our culture. In our culture, we constantly teach people to not give up on their dreams no matter what. We teach others to take matters of their life seriously if they want to excel at them.
But what I’ve found is, this is only partially true.
It’s good taking your life seriously, but it’s not healthy to obsess about it. And in our culture where we’re obsessed with controlling our outcomes, this is a difficult idea to practically live out.
Somewhere in your aspirations, there has to be a line drawn, a point where we are willing to open our hands and let grace, kindness, forgiveness, and humility surge in.
If that line is not present in your work, build it in.
Remember: too much of anything is a bad thing. Too much concern about the matters of your life is a bad thing when it chokes out the passion to your life. Instead, learn to release things to God. Develop a godly perspective and live a more meaningful life.