This morning (Saturday) I was laying in bed, having some  deep theological thoughts.  This is not something I do a lot.  But it’s Saturday and the kids are still sleeping and there’s no big hurry to get up and out of bed.  So I started thinking about a conversation that I read recently; Person A: “Am I a failure?” Person B: “No! Of course you’ve made some mistakes, we all have…but that doesn’t make you a failure.”  That was the gist of it anyway.  For some reason the answer bothered me.  I know it’s a fairly standard answer to that question so I wanted to figure out why.  I think maybe it bothered me because it’s not honest.  Isn’t screwing up, making bad choices and sinning the definition of the word, “failure”?  Doesn’t that make us ALL failures?

Hmm.

The Bible tells us that we have ALL sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.  That means ALL.  Not just the people that see it.  Not just the people that murder or steal.  All of us.  Even the ones that the worst thing that we will ever do in our lives it to tell a lie.  Or to spread a gossip.  That means that no matter what we do, how good we try to be, how many times we do things “right” we will NEVER measure up to the goodness of God.  Never.  It means that no matter how hard we try, we essentially will always be a failure.  Sure there might be some days in our lives where we feel a measure of success…but when you really think about that, we feel success not when we compare ourselves to God, but when we compare ourselves to other people.  Always, always when comparing yourself to God, you will come up significantly short.  Kind of sobering isn’t it?  Why is that so sobering?  Why does that sound so harsh to be labeled as a failure?  No one wants to be a failure.  Why?  Because it means that we’re not good at anything.  That we’re never going to be good enough.  That we don’t measure up.  We think it  means that we’re not worth anything. 

Ew.  Does that make you feel yucky?  It kinda does me.  Until I consider the good side of being a failure.

While I wallow in my feelings of being a failure, in my inadequacy, in my inability to EVER get it right, or to measure up to God- that’s when He came for me.  Our world, our society tells us that everything good about us is definied by what we do.  Or by what we contribute.  Or by how good we are at parenting, or cooking, or how many clients we have at our job.  You name it and there is always some sort of preformance-based worth that is always hanging over our heads.  My worth is not in what I can do.  It is not in how many diapers I’ve changed, or how many ministries I’ve started or any of that.  My worth is cemented in the knowledge that I was so valuable to God that He gave everything up to come rescue me.  God puts value on me.  I don’t earn value…I can’t.  I just AM valuable.  Cause God says so.  You could strip everything away from me that I have right now.  You could take away my kids, my husband, my house, my car, my gifts, my talents.  Everything I have that defines me- everything that gives me an “identity”.  And I would still have just as much value to God as I do now.  Because that’s not what it’s about.  It’s not about what I can do….it’s about what He did.

So… Are you a failure?  Am I?  Yep.