— Midweek Meditations:
thoughts, inspiration and encouragement
from ACF community members —
We spend our early lives striving to become someone, only to realise later that the thing that mattered most was already there—unseen, unmeasured, and waiting to be received.
A Tiktok trend in 2023 featured women asking the men in their lives how often they thought about the Roman empire. The answers ranged from ‘constantly’ to ‘a few times a month’. ‘Several times a week’ was a common response. So for you men out there, this week’s meditation will start in Roman Hispania with a young Julius Caesar, then a junior civil servant, staring at a statue of Alexander the Great with tears streaming down his cheeks.
In the Roman world, worth was visible, cumulative, and comparative. Caesar saw that, at the same age, Alexander had already crossed continents and subdued kingdoms, collected untold riches and written his name on the first page of history books forever. Caesar looked at himself and saw only failure, weakness, and delay. That comparison was enough. He turned away in silence.
In some way, I think that this kind of striving still carries many of us forward in 2026. With it, we measure ourselves, compare ourselves, and often find ourselves wanting. Like Caesar, we are disappointed not only in what we have not accomplished, but in who we have not yet become. This type of comparative striving comes especially easily to us when we are young. It gives direction as we measure ourselves—quietly at first, then more openly—against others and against imagined futures. It promises to give our life weight and purpose. It rewards effort and sharpens identity. To many, it feels necessary, even virtuous.
However, it is also blind to those parts of life that cannot easily be measured: relationships that are not strategic, moments that are not productive, generosity that is spontaneous and then forgotten. Competitive striving does not reject these things; it simply does not register them as meaningful. Nothing feels lost at the time, but slowly, something else begins to accumulate—not failure exactly, but something like ‘missingness’. Not what we did wrongly, but good that we did not recognise and hold onto when we had the chance.
At first, this is hard to name. There is no clear boundary, no single moment when it appears. It emerges gradually, and often only in retrospect, as we begin to sense that what was given was not always received as gift.
Ecclesiastes places this quiet realisation within the perspective of a whole lifetime:
“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.”
Ecclesiastes 12:1
Not as an interruption to striving, but as something that, over time, begins to sit alongside it. A way of holding what cannot be measured, even as we continue to measure what can.
And this is where Christ begins—often slowly—to shift the frame. In Him, value does not need to be accumulated or demonstrated. Who we are is not a simple equation of what we have achieved minus what we have missed. Goodness is not a measure of what distinguishes us, but begins to be seen as something we are able to receive.
The striver looks inward and sees something still to be completed. Over time, that same inward look can begin to change. We may start to notice something deeper: something already loved, in no need of self-justification, with a Christ-given capacity, moment by moment, for receiving grace, blessings, and goodness.
Caesar wept because he had not yet become what he thought he should be. I wonder whether, as he grew older, a quieter realisation emerged: not only of what he had not achieved, but of what he did not see while he was growing up.
The ACF Midweek Meditations
are written by a diverse group of our church members with the intention to seek God’s fingerprints in our lives. They range from somber to humorous and are inspired by all facets of live and faith. Written by ordinary people from all walks of life, they reflect a wide range of Christian backgrounds and spiritualities.
Each week’s text portrays the individual viewpoint of its author. They might not always resonate with everyone, and are not meant to be understood as representing the Anglican Church Freiburg as a whole. Yet, as a church that is aiming to ‘Build a Community of Grace’ we seek to practice learning from and listening to one another.
We pray that these humble ponderings add a small spark of blessing to your week.
Freiburg Anglican Church 
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