Success?

What does make you successful? The Christian cliches are easy to pull out and mumble mindlessly to those you think need to hear them and yet most of them have felt pretty shallow to me. "Give God your best." "Be faithful!" "Pray and read your Bible." What if you do all that and it still feels like an unsuccessful life? The Christian community certainly doesn't in reality assess life this way. Christian success is built on popularity, likability and doing better than others around you. Blogs are successful based not on how well they are written or designed but rather on how many actually go to them again and again. Even in the Christian community this is the case. Churches, ministries and artistic endeavors are all rated based on the very real success quotients of the world stretching all about us. How many like them, attend them or financially support them is the measure of achievement. We act like the Church doesn't see it this way yet it is so. But then what about the vast multitude who never taste success, never have their blogs read, never preach to crowds, never cut a CD, never gain more than a handful of compliments for their life work. Where do their lives rank? Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie are the John Lennon caricatures of Christian success or unsuccess lived out. But are they caricatures or the way we really do play out the Church tune? This week I am examining Noah and his wasted life. It has brought me to my knees in humble recognition of how far I have drifted from a right way of looking inward. What is a success paradigm I can live with and embrace with joy? Father McKenzie is not that far from my doorstep and I must know what to do about him. I already know what John Lennon thinks...