LIFE: A NEVER-ENDING JOURNEY

In the beginning, however the beginning began – big bang, six-days, whatever, we human beings came upon the face of the earth – by direct creation of the Creator, through evolution, whatever – we are here. How we got here, when we got here, only God knows. It does not really matter except for those who think it matters. What matters is that we are here. Once here, our journey begins. It is a never-ending journey.

What is that journey? It is a journey to become what we believe we were created to be. Created in God’s image, according to God’s likeness (Genesis 1:16) we now spend the rest of our lives trying to become truly like God, “perfect in every way”, as that old song has it. We never fully get there, never arrive at that destination until we die and meet our maker in death. Until then life is a never-ending journey to become like God.

That may sound or seem like chutzpah. How dare we believe that we are to be like God? Only God is God. We will never even come close to that sort of perfection. To state that that is our goal seems like we truly have a superior opinion of ourselves. On the contrary, what it means is that we have the ability to be better than we now are. We have the ability to make today better than yesterday and tomorrow better than today.

The fact that today may end up being worse than yesterday and tomorrow worse still is beside the point. Imperfect people are imperfect. We mike mistakes. We do what we know we should not do and not to what we know we should do and do so intentionally. In other words we sin and we sin every day which is a clear mark of our continuing imperfection. It is also a reminder that we can do better.

The road to becoming like God is long and winding and fraught with obstacles all along the way. Some of those obstacles are of our own making. Some are caused by others. Some just happen because we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even so, none of that ends the journey even as it makes it more difficult at times. The journey ends when God says that it will end and that is with our death.

The greatest obstacle along the road to personal perfection, to our personal desire to become more like God each and every day, is that we hardly ever give much thought to the truth that that is supposed to be our goal. We simply live from day to day, sometimes just hoping to survive. And, yes, while we are aware of our failing and shortcomings, our sins of commission and omission, we still all too often fail to see the big picture, namely what our goal in this life is to be.

What this means is that we have the opportunity to make each day better, to become a better person, to learn from failures. God, who created us is God’s image and likeness, would not have created us to become like God without giving us the grace and strength to do so. We simply need to do our part.

WHEN EVEN THE UNDERTAKER IS SORRY

Mark Twain was once asked for his philosophy of life. His response is very enlightening: “Endeavor to live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.” Twain opines that we should live in such a way that even if the only person who will financially profit from our death is the one who is being paid to lay us into the ground is sorry about our demise.

Will everyone miss us when we die? Even more, will anyone miss us when we die? We certainly hope some will even as we know not everyone will. We cannot touch the life of every person but we certainly can touch the lives of a few. We hope that these few will be sad when we pass on. Whether or not any one is is up to us. It depends on how we live our life.

Our goal in life is not simply to live so that people will mourn us when we are gone. We really won’t care because we will be dead. We won’t have an extra feel-good experience in death because the lines at our visitation are long and the eulogies are filled with words singing our praises. God will not be giving us an extra pat in the back either.

Twain’s observation begs the question: What kind of life must we lead that people will truly miss us, miss our presence among them, when we die, when we can no longer be a physical part of their lives? Does it mean that we have to be an integral part of their lives in the present? Does it mean that they will be less of a person because we are no longer around to fill what is missing in their lives? What does it mean?

To find the answer what we need to do is think about the people in our present lives whose death will truly cause much sorrow in our lives. What is it about them, about their lives, about who they are and what they do that is so vital and meaningful and important to us right here and now? What are those qualities that make our life better and will somehow be less once they are gone?

Once we can answer that question, then we have to look at our own life and try to discern what there may be about us that others find important to them. We all like to think, certainly believe, that we are valuable, that we have gifts and talents that are beneficial to others just as those others have gifts and talents that are beneficial to us. And we do have them. That is a certainty.

The issue then becomes even more personal when we are forced to ask ourselves whether or not we are using those gifts to the best of our ability, not so that others will be sorry when we die but because that is what we are supposed to do in the first place. That is the real issue at hand. For the truth is that when we use our gifts as best we can, we impact the lives of others just as those who use their gifts well impact our lives. We are sorry when they die, but thankful that they have been a part of our lives – and vice versa.

THERE’S A MESSAGE THERE SOMEWHERE

We were with my mother-in-law, taking her to lunch. I was driving and mother and daughter were reminiscing. The conversation turned to when Arlena was a little girl and one of her favorite toys was a child’s stove. One day she prepared a meal for her two older brothers who promptly refused to eat it. So she decided to give the meal she had lovingly prepared to the cat. The cat died.

There’s a message in that story somewhere. The obvious one for me is to not tell a very funny story while the driver is going fifty miles an hour down the highway. I laughed so hard I almost drove off the side of the road. Comedy should not be the fare for the open road; rather it should be when all are in a position to, if necessary, fall off our seats in laughter. Better safe than sorry.

It is also obvious that sometimes the best of intentions don’t turn out the way one had anticipated. Arlena at five years of age only wanted to please her brothers and certainly did not want to harm the family cat in any way much less kill the poor thing. But even so, back all those years, there is a lesson: be certain you know what you are doing ahead of time; and, if you are not and the action turns out disastrously, learn from your mistakes.

Arlena to this day loves to cook. She is always aware of the ingredients in everything she serves. Is that awareness somehow the result of her killing the cat back all those years or because she is a nurse and nurses have this innate need to make certain everything they allow us to put into our mouths is somehow beneficial and certainly not deadly? I can’t answer that and for the most part am thankful for her oversight of my personal health even when it means there is no junk food around when my body craves it.

But, then, of course, on the other hand, we often forget the lesson that we have learned, very quickly, too, and go on repeating our mistakes until it’s not the cat who suffers from our foolishness but we ourselves. Sometimes by then it is a little too late because the damage has been done and we cannot reverse what our negligence has caused. Yes, we admit, we should have stopped but did not and now have to live with the inevitable and painful and perhaps tragic consequences.

Life’s lessons come at us often when we least to expect to be taught. We learn those lessons even though, at the time, we neither understood that there was something being taught nor that we were actually absorbing that lesson and making it part of the way we lived. It is only in hindsight that we realized what had happened back than and are simply thankful for a lesson learned while unaware.

On the other hand, when we observe what happened from even a good intention – the cat died – we may learn nothing from it. Life’s lessons come to us in all shapes and forms and circumstances. How we respond can set the course for our life.

THE LACK OF WILL

Victor Marie Hugo, the French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic Movement, once observed that “People do not lack strength. They lack will.”  He was correct. We all have various abilities to do many and varied and wonderful things. Those abilities are our strengths. There are, of course, many actions that are out of our reach because we lack the ability to do them. No one is able to do everything.

What is incumbent upon each one of us is, first, to discover just what those talents, gifts, abilities are. Then, second, we are to develop them as best we can as we grow. For whatever reason there may be, many, many of us do not realize just how talented we are, just how gifted we are in one way or another. As a result, the world loses what we can offer to make this world a better place.

The other side of the coin is that even when we have learned what those gifts are with which God has endowed us, we lack, as Hugo observed, the will to develop them to the very best of our abilities. We have within us the strength to do so. For God does not give us any gift without giving us the strength to make that gift the best it can be. It is up to us to determine to use that strength to make it happen.

Yet, again, it won’t happen if we do not want it to happen, if we lack the will to do what is necessary. We all know very talented athletes, musicians, scholars – the list is endless -- who lack the will do put in the effort to develop that talent to its utmost. We may call them lazy and they probably are. But laziness is the result of one being unwilling to make the effort to do what needs to be done.

Often, of course, we are simply satisfied with the way things are. We claim that the manner in which we are using our talents is good enough. We’re a good enough athlete or teacher or parent or whatever, so what is the problem, we wonder, maybe even ask those who may be criticizing us for our lack of effort to be better. But good enough is not enough if we can truly be better. The strength to do so lies within. But it takes will power to engage that strength.

We know all this. It is not rocket science because we have observed it up close and personal. What parent has not told a child “you can better”? Which one of us has not been told the same? Which one of us – parent, child, employee, whomever – does not know this to be true, does not have to admit that we could do better if we really wanted to do so but at the present moment simply lack the will?

This world, our life, could be so much better if willed it to be so, if we used the gifts we have been given to the best of our ability, if we admitted that it was not for lack of strength that we have not done so but for the lack of will? So what is keeping us from being willing to be at it?