Embrace Your God-given Significance

“What is mankind that you are mindful of them; human beings that you care for them?” Ps. 8:4-5.

The world of an ant is small but incredibly complex. They forage for food, build impressive nests and tunnel systems, skillfully avoid predators, protect their colonies, and so on. The book of Proverbs speaks of the ant’s impressive work ethic (Prov. 6:6-8), but we hardly ever see it. To us, the ant is so insignificant that we trample it underfoot every day without a thought.

From eternity’s vantage point, our complex mortgage-paying, hedge-fund building, Balenciaga-wearing, AI-advancing, and CRISPR gene-editing lives are similarly insignificant. After all, we live on a small rock that’s suspended in space in a universe we barely understand, and despite our impressive capacities, we are still frail, susceptible to all manner of injury and disease, the things we build crumble eventually, and we are gone in a blink. There is an inherent temporality in our nature and achievement that makes us all insignificant no matter how rich, influential, and “powerful” we appear.

Let’s call that reality our “antship.”

Our antship reminds us that if we are to have any real significance, we must be attached to something more permanent. God—the Permanent One—the Creator of all things, designed it that way. To find our significance, we must look to God because He—not anything or anyone else—gives meaning and status to everything.

In Psalm 8:4, David stops and gazes at the majesty of the universe, and struck by his smallness (antship) in the overall scheme of things, he asks God why He cares about us mere mortals. The Bible answers that question clearly.

We matter because we are made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26) and there is no greater essence. We matter because we belong to God and are loved and cherished by Him (Rom. 8:16; 1 Jn 3:1; Rom. 8:38-39; 1 Cor. 6:19). We are so loved that everything on earth was made for us (Gen.1:28), we are never left alone (Deut. 31:8, Matt. 28:20), we are protected in our coming and going (Ps. 91), and we carry God’s Spirit within us (1 Cor 6:19). That makes us significant.

If we do not embrace our God-given significance, we will try to find it elsewhere—in our money, houses, relationships, jobs, “followers,” and so on. And all of that amounts to finding our significance in the quality or size of a perishing ant hill. Meanwhile, God stands by reminding us that an ant hill cannot and does not define us; we (the creators of the ant hill) define it, and He defines us.

Question: How do you feel about your antship? Where have you been finding your sense of significance?