Irrelevant!
Irrelevant!
Irrelevant
By Edward Wolfe
During the spring of 2019 for a number of reasons I began to feel increasingly useless. As I approached retirement, I began to realize that my skills and knowledge were of little interest to anyone besides myself. My mind seized on a word--”irrelevant”--to describe this feeling. The word and its meaning began to grow like a specter in my mind until one night as I lay in bed I felt particularly despairing. I uttered a one-word prayer: "Help!" I eventually fell asleep and had a vivid dream.
The dream, though vivid, was rather lacking in plot. In fact, it was nothing more than a little scene, like a tableau. I was sitting on a sofa and my son Joshua, at about 3 or 4 years of age, was standing close to me. I was hugging him with warm feelings of affection.
When I awoke, I thought, “What was that all about?” It did not seem helpful at all. In fact I rather sarcastically said to God, “Well thanks very much! That was not helpful at all.” While I do not think that it is wise to be sarcastic with the Creator, nonetheless that was my nasty remark.
I did not really understand the dream until I went to church a couple of days later. The pastor was talking about our worth as believers in Christ. Our worth is not based upon what we do, what we can contribute, or our productivity, he said. Rather, our worth in Christ is simply that we are children of God. I suddenly flashed on the dream I had had two days earlier. No one looks at a three year old child and says, “Irrelevant!” Children are not relevant or irrelevant. They just are precious human beings. We love them because they are people. I love my son Josh simply because he is my son.
I suddenly realized that that must be how God feels about us. He doesn't love us for our productivity or our usefulness or our relevance. He simply loves us because we are his children. So in that little dream, I feel God completely answered my prayer, although it took me a little while and some help from someone else to understand the answer. I’m not irrelevant; I’m deeply valued by the one Person whose opinion matters most.
