Thoughts on Success

With my cousin, I have been tossing about thoughts on what success truly is. The world seems to hold a definition of success that once pursued feels empty and void. So, if success is not money, toys, perfect body, or even the love of family or friends; what is success? As I was reading in Brennan Manning's book The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus I found a passage that begins to address this issue:

"When you visit a home for the mentally retarded, like Jean Vanier's L'Arche, the Ark, in Mobile, Alabama, you see people who have no worth in our productive society. They don't do anything. They are just there. Yet you never doubt that God loves them. The handicapped make us realize our handicaps. They strip off the masks we wear, the roles we play that give us a sense of earning out position with God and others. They challenge us to let go of everything we have taken literally, all of our lives, to find our own symbols of the Holy One, to open ourselves to the mystery of the gracious God within us.
The unearned love of God can be disturbing. The idea of reward without work might put a brake on our dedication to the Gospel. I mean, why struggle to do good if God loves so recklessly and foolishly? It appears to be a sensible, valid question.

But those who truly know the God of Jesus are not likely to ask why they should be laboring for the kingdom while others stand around all day idle. They want life and they have found the fullness of life in God Himself....The rest of us may ask why we should bother to live uprightly if God is going to be so generous, but not those who have found the God of Jesus. Only when our inner vision is blocked by resentment, outrage, anger, or envy do we find ourselves threatened by God's love. The last prayer of Jesus on the cross, 'Father forgive them. They know not what they do,' is a testament from one who knew what God is like.

The love of God embodied in Jesus is radically different from our natural human way of loving."