Every offseason, Major League teams search for ways to improve their current and future rosters. Free agents are signed. Trades are made. Contenders look for that final piece to push them over the top. Rebuilders look for the prospect to turn their futures around. All it takes, they think, is just one player, one big change, to get them to the top.
If we’re honest, we are often no different in life. We are all looking for ways to have our “best life” now, whatever that might mean at each stage of life. To get there, we believe we are just one decision, one break, one change, one program, one payday, one move away. Life’s ‘contenders’ look for that one final piece to push them over the top. Life’s ‘rebuilders’ look for the prospect to turn their futures around. Just like in the Big Leagues.
We are all looking for a savior, a way out of our current situation and into a better one.
By the time the New Testament opened, the Jews were looking for the same thing. A better life, freedom from their enemies, someone to push them over the top and ensure the rebuilding of their kingdom.
Jesus was so different. From the beginning, his earthly father was told this true Messiah would be different. Matthew 1:21–“You will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
Not because he will be the final piece to push his people over the top.
Not because he will be the prospect to turn around their current situation.
But because he will save them from their sins.
Maybe it’s time we surrender to the work that Jesus wants to do. Maybe it’s time we get out of the way. Maybe it’s time we give up the idea we have of what our best life even is, as if we could possibly know.
Maybe it’s time we stop looking at Jesus as just a final piece to our lives, and instead make him our entire life.
Maybe it’s time we stop hoping Jesus will simply change our immediate prospects, and instead ask him to change everything about us.
*Maybe* he’ll be better than our best life now.
Lord Jesus, be my savior, my life, my all. Amen.
