just thinking...

Life is fragile. I’ve never been more aware that I am only human.

 

Have you ever thought about the implications of living?

 

Let’s look at this from a Christian perspective. (whatever that means)

 

So you believe in Jesus. I don’t care about the nit-picky details, the important part is that you believe that you’ve been saved by grace by the perfect son of God, which died on the cross for you before you were born, and there is nothing that you are capable of to save yourself from, well, you (and the devil). So I suppose you could say I’m kind of interested in the Jesus-factor…

 

Life is hard; at times it really, truly, honestly sucks. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. In this life we only have one guarantee and our only guarantee is death. Let this reality sink in for a moment. Our only guarantee in life is that one day we won’t be alive. And that sucks. Now I want to premise the rest of this with THIS IS MY OPINION:

 

I have a decision. If I accept that the only guarantee in life is death then I can choose to look at my existence as a legacy, something that can affect the world around me and then the belief that there is something at work here bigger than me. I can choose to believe I came into existence by the cosmic chance called conception and my purpose in life is to find my own success. I can choose to believe that I have no purpose in life and the only thing that I can do is accept that life is pain and there is nothing more; only survive long enough to die. I like to think I fall in the first category. I tend to think that much of the world falls in the second. I hate to think that there are people who fall in the third.

 

 

Fear

 

Fear is a huge factor in how we live. Even if I choose to live in the first category, my life can still be dictated by fear. That’s right: dictated. Think of a dictatorship; now none of this benevolent dictatorship stuff, I’m talking about having your life controlled by an outside force to the degree of not even knowing you are slave to yourself. Living in fear is not what God wants for us. But what is fear? Fear is the absence of confidence in the living God. And that, unfortunately looks different for everybody. It’s sin, and sin has a funny way of masking itself to look desirable, intelligent, Godly, or anything that seems good. So what about being afraid of going to a city that is too dangerous and there is too much violence, where you might not be comfortable; maybe you could bring them Jesus after the violence stops, right? What about talking about the blessings that Jesus has given you to that person you see everyday? What about the people who live in a way that you don’t agree with or don’t understand? Maybe we should just wait for someone better equipped to go do the stuff that we aren’t comfortable with…

 

Thank God for Jesus. For through him we have joy.

 

All of this being said, I think we regularly misinterpret what it means.

 

I can’t say that God never promised us happiness anywhere in the bible, because I don’t have the whole bible memorized, but I do believe that Jesus promised a life that was not easy, and not always fun, daisies and sunshine, but a life that meant more than what this world could comprehend. It’s time that I start taking joy in the hard things. Think about one of those saying that we hear as Christians… “it’s good, but it’s hard.” That’s right, it is good. Life is a blessing that none of us deserve, and by God’s grace we get to experience this world that is broken and weary. We get to choose to live a life of hope and love amidst the darkness. It’s quite the privilege that God has given us. So take joy in the sucky things, even those are blessings.

 

I suppose my closing thoughts to this blog is to first say, sorry for being such a slacker and not blogging…Secondly, this is just a tidbit of what God is showing me here in Mexico, so I’m excited to reveal more, thirdly is, I really want everyone to take joy in the puzzle that life is, in the battle that life is, to take pleasure in the uncertainty and to never stop asking questions. Without any questions, how would we make any progress? We just wouldn’t.