Reveal parties have become all the rage, haven’t they? For a woman, the state of pregnancy usually comes with its own peculiar set of signs from the beginning. But for the rest of the world, once the life growing in secret starts to noticeably bulge, inquiring minds want to know what it will be. Somehow, “a human being” is not a sufficient answer. We want to be clued in! Life is chocked full of secrets!
Why on earth are we on earth?
That’s the deep, unfathomable, complex mystery. We get a lot of it figured out if we’re alive long enough and if we pay attention to all that the experience of being alive may teach us. But along the way, pieces of that ginormous puzzle show up and shift from where we thought they should be. How did that happen? Maybe it’s just all a universe-sized secret we’re not really designed to know.
But the wondering won’t go away. What’s the point of living? What’s the purpose of our little life swimming in a sea of gazillions and gazillions of human lives that are and ever have been?
Some clever person long ago quipped a quote that appeared on a calendar that hung in my room when I was in high school: What’s the secret to a long life? Keep breathing! Well, there’s that. But beyond the continued functioning of this baffling vessel we’re given at birth, there’s often this gnawing sense that there’s supposed to be something spectacular about our one little splash in the sea of humanity. If we’re somehow expected to do more or be other than we are, where can we find the instructions? Even the IKEA kind featuring cute little androgynous figures doing productive tasks would be helpful!
Many in the world have seen it on a sign that occasionally shows up in sports arenas, held in the human hands of someone who wants to let others in on the not-so-big not-so-secret mystery: John 3:16. That’s a verse in the Bible which features a wee little word with a world-changing impact: love. So, that’s the key that unlocks the universe of our wondering: we’re here to be loved. Yes, be loved. Loved by a God who made a splash in the sea of humanity birthed in a baffling vessel just like the rest of us. And just so we would all swim in the waters of a love that saves us.
It’s no secret the world wasn’t expecting that. But history bears witness: it’s been one universe-sized world-changing reveal party ever since.