The weight of responsibility on the irresponsible.

God spoke:

“Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, And, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.” God created human beings; he created them godlike, Reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female. God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible.”

Genesis 1:26‭-‬28 MMSG

The most terrifying thing in the world is raising children!

The hard part is not just that they are so often helpless, messy, misguided and dangerously putting themselves in harms way on a consistent basis. The difficulty is knowing that every interaction with them, every time you haphazardly scream a correction, every time you forget to pick them up from school, every time you unknowingly give more attention to one over the other, is slowly molding an adult person.

In moments of clarity I shiver in fear that I am responsible for four future adults!

God have mercy on them!

And He does! And gracefully His mercy extends to me as well!

So outnumber, my wife and I often look at each other and say jokingly "what were we thinking?" Obviously we wouldn't trade one of them in. There are those rare moments when sunlight does break through the clouds and one of them will catch you by surprise and gift you with a hug, a handmade card of affection or perhaps just fifteen extra minutes of sleep. And that somehow makes it all worth it.

Having a child and becoming a parent means becoming responsible, whether you like it or not.

In the same vain God created us to be responsible for this earth, for everything in it! Responsible not only in how well we combat global warming or how great we are at separating our garbage into recyclables and actual trash, but we are accountable with how we interact with humanity as well.

Life is about relationships, about people and how we cultivate and care for those relationships and those people. The greatest and yet often most difficult investments I have made in my life is in other people. The times you bite your tongue to refrain from speaking and simply listen, the times you break through your own discomfort and give a sympathetic hug to someone in need of one, those times that you do something for someone else which actually costs you something.

I have to be honest, this whole idea of having some piece of accountability in my relationships and friendships with other people makes me uncomfortable. It is so much easier to avoid people, draw the shades and take care of my own comforts and concerns. When it comes right down to it my greatest struggle is selfishness, because I love myself much more than anyone or anything else.

However, what if we looked at those around us, our family, friends, coworkers and casual acquaintances and weighed how much influence and impact we actually do have in their lives? As painful and uncomfortable it is, what if we invested more in them for no other reason than their betterment and not just our own? We cannot grasp how meaningful, how powerful that could be.

The world is a better place because of such people. I see them every so often and they inspire me! The people who buy a cup of coffee for the stranger behind them in line, the person who stops to casually chat with that "weird" neighbor that everyone else tries so hard to avoid, the person who answers the phone against all their better judgement when that one "draining" friend calls because they know no one else will.

The truth is we benefit for our "sacrifices", for our investments in the lives of others. We grow, we learn, we stretch ourselves beyond what we ever thought we could withstand and we thus become someone a little bit better.

God said “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature". We reflect God, in the very least we present a very small glimpse of Him when we put other peoples needs before our own.

If you want to know if there is a God, if you want to feel his presences in your life again or if you have as much doubt as you do faith then invest yourself in relationships, friendships and in people in general. It is at the heart of what Jesus did. He spent his precious time hanging out with humanity, simply sharing life with people in the mundane everyday and turning it into sacred moments.

God gave us everything on this earth, and thus made us answerable for it all! We only do it justice when we offer it right back to Him,  admitting that we do a horrendous job with it. We need supernatural guidance just to keep this world turning, just like our children need us to keep them alive!