By Holly Minion
One of my favorite verses in the Bible is 1 Peter 5:10, “But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” As a child, and even as an adult, that promise was very appealing. Perfection. I wanted to be perfect.
I agonized over my college choice, because I had to make sure I went to the perfect school. While I was there, I had to make the perfect grades and be sure I was still following the perfect educational path for me. I found the perfect guy and planned the perfect wedding. Then, according to plan, I had the perfect babies I had always dreamed of having.
Along the way, God attempted to show me that my plans for perfection were useless. He upended my college plans between my sophomore and junior years. (That disruption changed my entire life for the better.) I always knew I wouldn’t really find a perfect guy (although I’m pretty sure he’s as close to perfect as it gets), and the crazy things that happened during my “perfect wedding” now make for fun stories at parties. The road to my perfect dream of motherhood was long and hard.
But what if these events in my life weren’t for me? What if my marriage and my husband wasn’t about me? What if my children weren’t the compilation of a lifelong dream? What if everything in my life was a lot more basic than that—they were to make me perfect. Strongs Concordance defines the word perfect in 1 Peter 5:10 as, “to strengthen, perfect, complete, make one what he ought to be.”
Every time my husband forgets to run the dishwasher, it’s not a disruption of my perfect life. It’s God’s way of giving me a chance to become more perfect, more complete. When my five-year-old forgets to be quiet while the baby is napping for the fortieth time in one day, I can choose to see it as an interruption of my perfect plans, or I can appreciate how God is teaching me patience to make me more like Him.
What about those things that I thought I needed to make my life perfect: that spouse, that job, that house, that car? What if the reason that I don’t have them is because God is using different tools to make me perfect? He is using the circumstances I am in and the people surrounding me to ground me, complete me, and strengthen me.
The beginning of the book of 1 Peter reminds us of the temporary nature of this life.
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
In 100 years, the things in this life that give me the greatest heartache, as well as the things that bring me the greatest joy, won’t matter. What will matter is that I will be in heaven. And how I responded to those sorrows and joys either brought me closer to the God I will see face-to-face or farther away. If I view every single thing God brings into my life as an opportunity to grow more perfect, holy, and Christ-like then I will begin to treat people and circumstances differently. They aren’t tools towards happiness or success. They are tools in the hand of a loving God to help me see a bigger picture.
I have a choice every single day. I can live it with just today and my wants in view. Or instead, I can live it with a view towards heaven, towards the end of my faith, and take every opportunity—the good and the bad—to really, truly become more perfect.