real life

Col. 3:4 (NLT)
And when Christ, who is your real life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.

This is what I am trying to understand. This is what I so desperately want to have happen. This is what I am trying to avoid??!! Christ is my real life.

I thought my real life was negotiation. My real life is not my wife, negotiating with her as we move along the journey of nurturing our three children? It’s not working out a system where we step in, retreat, step in, retreat, with our blossoming offspring? Yes, raising teenagers is a lot like fencing. But that is not real life?

Or what about my thought life? Failures and accomplishments being worked out during every waking moment. The struggle of what it means to move. Move ahead. Move ahead without looking behind. Move ahead without looking behind at what I did and did not do when I moved ahead. My thinking is not my real life?

Jesus has a plan in all of this. I have a purpose in that plan. My real life is actually all of those things and more but it is not real unless I am no longer the focal point, but Jesus who is working through me. The reality of who I am is not me. I am hidden in Christ, remember? Real life is happening right now, but it won’t be crystal clear until he shows up again. Really. Then for the first time, I will see, along with the rest of creation, who I really am, as well as who he really is.