Living Long Term
I didn't post this last week because (as most of you know) I was in San Diego at the National tournament for speech and debate. While I was there something I thought a lot about was this idea about living like there is no tomorrow. I have been told to live without regrets, to live in the moment and live every day to its fullest. None of those things are inherently wrong, what was wrong is how I took them. I lived in every moment, not thinking about how it would affect the next. I lived like there truly might not be any tomorrow, rushing everything and taking things out of their right time.
I had the opportunity to speak on eternal life during the tournament, it was the last speech I ever gave competitively, and by far it was my favorite. When we, as Christians, think of eternal life we think of life after death, we think of heaven and hell. It is my belief that eternal life is more than that, so much more. My belief stems from the principle laid for in John 10:10 that so few of us truly live. This promise that Jesus came that we might have "Life and have it more abundantly." Eternal life is simple. It is life without end. It is not life that starts when you die, but simply acknowledging that death is not the end of life. That being said, why on earth should anybody care?
Life sucks sometimes. There are times when life is absolutely miserable and you just wonder if it is worth it. The classic country song where your horse died, your dog ran away, and your girl left you. That happens sometimes. We go through seasons that are testing and challenging and take every ounce of strength from us. Seasons where we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. All we can see is the people dying before our eyes. The mass shootings, the bombings, the suicides, the rapes, the murders, the utter idiocy of mankind. Daily all of that is thrown in our face. Are we not all drowning in a sea of depressing news that sucks our joy away? Are we not all deaf to the sound of the drums announcing the death of yet another? Are we not all out of tears to cry, emotionless as we stare blankly at our newsfeeds?
When we grasp this idea of eternal life, of life without end, we can truly start to have hope for the world around us and for our own lives. We can realize that the mass shootings will end, as will terrorism and hatred and the destruction of innocence. But more than that we can truly start to love the people around us. When we live like there is no tomorrow we gain this urgency to do everything we ever wanted to do and we just make everyone around us suffer for it. Our lives become about us and we add to the problems that we detest. When we realize that time is, in fact, limitless, we can cease to be perturbed by these petty problems we face. That person who cut you off in traffic, screw it, what is a few seconds in the long scheme of things. That guy who flipped you off for no apparent reason, why care? The words people have said, the things they have done, does it really matter all that much when time is endless?
The most important part to me about realizing the truth of eternal life is loving yourself. How many things do we still beat ourselves up over? Those things we said that we shouldn't have said... the things we have done that we regret... The flaws we have that we easily forgive in others, but in ourselves they are a source of grief. Sure we have learned from the mistakes, but on those rainy days we remember everything we have ever done wrong. Realizing that life is without end can gain for us this perspective that in the long run those mistakes are small and insignificant. Those mistakes won't last, they just make us stronger. In a marathon the runner cant think about the small stutter steps at the start of the race, he focuses on every step, every breath.
I love living each day to its fullest as God gives it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Life is not short, it's forever, live every day, every moment, as it comes, but don't lease sight of the light at the end of your tunnel :)...
P.S. This is week 10, week 12 of posting will be my last, because alas God is bringing me to another platform, another place, another time. I have enjoyed so very much sharing a bit of my heart with all of you!
I had the opportunity to speak on eternal life during the tournament, it was the last speech I ever gave competitively, and by far it was my favorite. When we, as Christians, think of eternal life we think of life after death, we think of heaven and hell. It is my belief that eternal life is more than that, so much more. My belief stems from the principle laid for in John 10:10 that so few of us truly live. This promise that Jesus came that we might have "Life and have it more abundantly." Eternal life is simple. It is life without end. It is not life that starts when you die, but simply acknowledging that death is not the end of life. That being said, why on earth should anybody care?
Life sucks sometimes. There are times when life is absolutely miserable and you just wonder if it is worth it. The classic country song where your horse died, your dog ran away, and your girl left you. That happens sometimes. We go through seasons that are testing and challenging and take every ounce of strength from us. Seasons where we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. All we can see is the people dying before our eyes. The mass shootings, the bombings, the suicides, the rapes, the murders, the utter idiocy of mankind. Daily all of that is thrown in our face. Are we not all drowning in a sea of depressing news that sucks our joy away? Are we not all deaf to the sound of the drums announcing the death of yet another? Are we not all out of tears to cry, emotionless as we stare blankly at our newsfeeds?
When we grasp this idea of eternal life, of life without end, we can truly start to have hope for the world around us and for our own lives. We can realize that the mass shootings will end, as will terrorism and hatred and the destruction of innocence. But more than that we can truly start to love the people around us. When we live like there is no tomorrow we gain this urgency to do everything we ever wanted to do and we just make everyone around us suffer for it. Our lives become about us and we add to the problems that we detest. When we realize that time is, in fact, limitless, we can cease to be perturbed by these petty problems we face. That person who cut you off in traffic, screw it, what is a few seconds in the long scheme of things. That guy who flipped you off for no apparent reason, why care? The words people have said, the things they have done, does it really matter all that much when time is endless?
The most important part to me about realizing the truth of eternal life is loving yourself. How many things do we still beat ourselves up over? Those things we said that we shouldn't have said... the things we have done that we regret... The flaws we have that we easily forgive in others, but in ourselves they are a source of grief. Sure we have learned from the mistakes, but on those rainy days we remember everything we have ever done wrong. Realizing that life is without end can gain for us this perspective that in the long run those mistakes are small and insignificant. Those mistakes won't last, they just make us stronger. In a marathon the runner cant think about the small stutter steps at the start of the race, he focuses on every step, every breath.
I love living each day to its fullest as God gives it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Life is not short, it's forever, live every day, every moment, as it comes, but don't lease sight of the light at the end of your tunnel :)...
P.S. This is week 10, week 12 of posting will be my last, because alas God is bringing me to another platform, another place, another time. I have enjoyed so very much sharing a bit of my heart with all of you!
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