HO Week 2 (9/2) - Human Flourishing

What is True Success?

The school year has started up again, and with it comes another semester of mentoring for Honors Orientation! Here's my blog post responding to the first article for that class.....

College students are busy people—super busy. I’ve been told “College is such a great time of life, you should take advantage of it and experience everything you can!” However, juggling too many balls can result in a feeling of being completely overwhelmed. The arms flail, the balls fall out of control and scatter.

We aren’t supposed to be in control of our lives. Part of the Fall was choosing to believe we know better than God, so the flesh will always struggle to convince us to take things into our own hands. When we yield to the quest for worldly success, we enter into an unending cycle of trying to claim to the top of an ever-extending ladder.

Danielle Sallade says basically the same in her article “Human Flourishing.” She says our work is to be centered on service to Christ and others rather than our achievements. While I agree with her, it’s important for us to also realize that it is just as easy to run ourselves ragged by participating in too much. If I try to serve in every capacity, I will feel just as exhausted as someone constantly striving for human success.

The danger of over-serving is not something Sallade really addressed in her essay. That is what I often find myself caught in. I love helping people. But I am not called to fill every need of each person. That’s Christ’s role, not mine! Sallade does talk about how we should look at our gifts and see how we can best use those in Christ’s service. We are to offer our abilities up to Him, to use as He desires to accomplish His plan. Searching out the will of God and trusting Him is the only way to find true satisfaction in life—not trying to gain all the secular or Christian accolades for being a “successful” person.

{If you're interested in reading more, this is simply the abridged, HO-sanctioned (ie, closer to 250 words) version of a post on Thrive80, where I am a contributor. You can see it "here"}