Afraid of becoming irrelevant

One of my biggest fears is the fear of becoming irrelevant. There’s a part of me that tends to lean towards the idea that I have already done my best, that I have peaked, and from here on out is the plateau of my life. I’m very quick to recognize it in myself, but I’m not sure I’ve ever admitted it very openly. My fear of irrelevance and that I’m living in the beginning of my plateau is completely unwarranted and small minded (I know), but it does keep me up at night, dictate where I go,  what I don’t do, whether or not I keep social media, etc.

Then I decided to camp out in the book of Philippians, and chapter 3 knocked the wind out of me.

Paul writes: “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

He then goes on to say that he believes he hasn’t attained that which Christ took hold of him for.

How odd to think—Paul, having encountered the risen Christ, witnessed miracles he can hardly believe, leading the cause of the Christian Church, most of his letters making up the Christian Bible—and yet, he still believed he hadn’t attained his purpose at that point in his life.

It wasn’t until he was about to die that he nodded and said satisfactorily, “I have run my race well”.

I wonder what our lives would look like if we looked at our goals the way Paul did – not there yet.

I wonder where we would end up if we looked at everything through the lens of taking hold of it the way Christ took hold of us – sacrificially, passionately, recklessly, all in, humbly, to death. 

There is no point of arrival, no “I’ve made it”.

We don’t get to stop when we plant the church, start the company, write the book, turn fifty.

Christ took hold of us for a purpose. We don’t get to quit, even when we think we’re done.

It only goes up.