Calvin and Hobbes is a cartoon about a dynamic duo: a little boy and a tiger. One particular episode portrays Calvin saying something like this. “The great painter Paul Gaugin asks ‘Where did I come from? Who am I? And where am I going’?” Then Calvin answers Gauguin’s questions in words like this, “Well, speaking for myself, I came from my room. I’m a kid with big plans, and I’m going outside!”. Calvin’s lightweight answers to Gaugin’s heavyweight questions are typical of how any people today don’t or can’t respond to the major questions about their existence. These questions are called “life questions” by philosophers. Every person from every culture and period of time faces these questions in one way or another because the search for the ultimate meaning of our lives is hard-wired into us as humans. The inability to answer them in a satisfactory way is what leads so many contemporary people to the restlessness and dissatisfaction that defines so much of life today. The “what’s wrong?” emptiness of so many comes from the fact that they have not discovered the answers to these questions. But in Christ, God has provided us with these answers. We come from Him, loved into existence as unique never to be repeated sons and daughters. We are going to heaven to be with Him forever, redeemed by the death of the Lord. And while we are here we are to work to establish His Kingdom in this world, a kingdom of peace, love and justice. Knowing all this, grounds us, gives us purpose, and hope in the future. Imagine having to live without the assurance Christ brings to us.
