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Devotional
BY TY GIBSON
One day in a little Australian
town called Byron Bay I
noticed a sign that read “I
saw the universe change
today.” Whoever wrote
those words was paying attention.
God’s Three Options
According to “chaos theory,” the single
movement of a butterfly’s wing may be
the determining factor in the formation
of a hurricane. According to the
Bible, the movements of each
individual life exert determinative
effects on the quality of other
lives, even to the point of impacting
eternal destinies.
Each deed you execute triggers
a series of outcomes for which
you are the solitary source.
As God went forward with the work
of creation, only three conceivable possibilities
lay before Him. He could create
(1) machines, (2) slaves, or (3) free
moral agents. Only the third option
would be consistent with the aspirations
of love, which is the essence of
who God is. So here we are, beings of
huge and magnificent significance,
beings who matter so much that our
actions run adjacent to God’s actions as
genuinely free, beings who possess the
power to create effects for which we
alone are the cause, and which ripple
into eternity with never-ending impact.
God created humanity “in his own
image” (Gen. 1:27), which means, among
other things, that every human being is
“endowed with a power akin to that of
the Creator—individuality, power to
think and to do.” 1
The human being is a mind-boggling
wonder. Standing in blown-away awe of
what it means to be human, King David
sang to the Creator, “What is man that
You take thought of him, and the son of
man that You care for him? Yet You have
made him a little lower than God, and
You crown him with glory and majesty!”
(Ps. 8:4, 5). 2 Daniel the prophet realized
the weightiness of our moral influence
when he said that those “who lead . . .
many to righteousness” will “shine . . .
like the stars forever and ever” (Dan.
12:3), while others, he said, will go down
in history with “disgrace and everlasting
contempt” (verse 2). Said another way,
human actions carry eternal effects.
The Difference You Make
In the wake of each person’s decisions,
strands of history are set in
motion that otherwise would never
unfold. The shape of reality itself has
EACH DEED YOU EXECUTE
TRIGGERS A SERIES OF
OUTCOMES FOR WHICH YOU
ARE THE SOLITARY SOURCE.
been and is being incrementally configured
by the wondrous outworking of
your will, my will, every other will, and
the interplay between them all. What
you do matters immensely because
what you do brings into existence one
relational dynamic after another, either
positive or negative, that otherwise
would not exist. Each deed
you execute triggers a
series of outcomes for
which you are the solitary
source.
There are people—real people with
names and faces—who are what they
are, who know what they know, who feel
what they feel, fear what they fear, and
love what they love because of you.
There is pain in the world right now
that would not exist if I had not done
some particular deeds that imposed it.
And, no doubt, there is joy in some heart
right now that would not be there if I
had not given it. More amazing still,
your “fingerprints,” and mine, are upon
the very heart of God. Your life, and my
life, have impacted the Almighty Creator
of the universe. He has known grief and
pain, as well as elation and joy, because
of you and because of me. Jesus
explained that anything I do for or
against any human being registers in
His heart as if done to Him. At the very
least, this means that the effect of every
moral action is borne by God because of
His infinitely empathetic love for every
person (Matt. 25:40-45). Divinity itself is
injured by our wrongs and blessed by
our right doing. The loss of one soul will
leave God forever bereft of the companionship
that might have been His if that
soul had been saved, and the rescue of
one soul will bestow immeasurable,
eternal joy upon God’s heart.
There are men and women and children
who await your impact, who crave
your love, who may be morally elevated
by your example, made alive
by your kind words, forever
saved by your revelation of
the Savior’s heart. It lies
within my power as a human
being, made in God’s image,
to actualize events and relationships
of everlasting
beauty that cannot come to pass apart
from my choices. Every act of love I perform
constitutes an infinite moral good
that makes a difference to the course of
history and, therefore, in the eternal
scheme of reality itself. If I speak a word
of encouragement to a heavy heart, it
matters on a grand and eternal scale. If I
Why You
visit a sick person and envelop their
heart in compassion, that deed means
something of staggering worth. If I feed
a hungry child, doing so constitutes a
crucial experience of generosity in that
child’s existence, as well as in God’s
existence as the Omni-benevolent One
who loves that child as Himself.
Each human being’s life carries an
“eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17), a
weight of moral and relational dignity
that only eternity itself can measure.
Which means that the measurement of
my life’s influence will never reach its
final calculation. Each deed will ripple
forever in its effect.
Take it in: the overall content of reality
for other created beings and for God
Himself will forever bear the mark of
your individual existence, and mine.
Every deed you perform stands com-
22 (582) | www.AdventistReview.org | June 27, 2013