What is a waste?

Just prior to being executed, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison cell, "I cannot get away from Jeremiah 45." When I read that a few days ago, I had to go see what was in Jeremiah 45 that Bonhoeffer couldn't get away from.

Jeremiah 45:5 says this, "should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the LORD, but wherever you go I will let you escape with your life" (NIV). I can see why Bonhoeffer had trouble getting away from it. He was a great thinker, theologian, teacher and pastor. His writings are considered classics. He could rightly have expected to accomplish great things during his lifetime.

Bonhoeffer consciously decided to violate his deeply held beliefs in pacifism to participate in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. That plot failed, his connection to it was uncovered, and he was imprisoned in January of 1944. For the last year of his life, Bonhoeffer served as an unofficial pastor to the prisoners and guards that surrounded him. On April 9, 1945 he was executed. One month later, Germany surrendered. Bonhoeffer was only 39.

This promising thinker and pastor chooses to invest his life in this failed plot and then is executed for it. By most standard that would be considered a tragic failure--the waste of a life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer chose to waste his life. Right? I wonder.

I've heard the question before,"If failure was not possible, what would you do for God?" We're frequently encouraged to do great things for God. I've encouraged people this way myself. As I get older I am occasionally visited with the fear that I might be wasting my life. But does the expectation of great accomplishment for God come from him or is it our own invention?

When we have these expectations of ourselves, is it a way of hedging on grace? Is it a way to somehow prove to God that his redemption of us was worth it?

It is a great sacrifice to choose to be something for God. But is is at least as great a sacrifice to choose to be nothing for God. I struggle with that question. Am I willing to be nothing for God? Am I willing to disappear into obscurity if that is what God asks of me? I struggle with how I should respond when God says, "should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not." What if God asks me to "waste" my life on something that never bears any earthly fruit; or he asks me to live in such a way that I am forgotten minutes after the last shovel full of dirt covers my grave? Can I be okay with that? Would that be irresponsible? Would that be a waste?

Jesus said we must become like little children to enter the kingdom. Do little children have great ambitions? When I was a little kid I don't think I paid much attention to anything but kid things. It wasn't until I was a little older that I began to aspire to be more than what I was.

Micah 6:8 says, "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" (NIV). If that is what the Lord requires, should that not be the focus of our ambitions?

Maybe that is where the trouble lies. We get things backwards. We try to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God while we are trying to live out our ambitions to do great things for him. Maybe our ambition and focus should be to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God and trust him to bring about the great things if he chooses.

Bonhoeffer put justice, mercy and a humble walk with God first. That cost him his life and all the great accomplishments he may have achieved. Did he short change God? Did he cheat himself? Was it a waste?