Life Lessons

We picnic on the beach.  We play in the sand.  We swim in the cool waters.  We nap in the cool shade of tree.  We walk on trails through beautiful gardens.  Life is good.

We attend the long boring lectures at school.  We study into the late-night hours.  We work at solving the problems our employer tasks us with.  We plow fields in the hot sun.  The job never seems done; the day never seems to end.  Life is hard.

We often think of life that way: good or hard.  Whatever moment we are in, life IS.  But we rarely think of our life’s purpose: life is becoming; life is changing; life is growing.  Life has a destination.  What is important is not what life IS, but what life WILL BE.

We CAN see life’s short journeys:  the day at the beach, the room to be painted, the meal to be prepared --- and we work to their end.  We can even see the long journeys: the long years of schooling ending with graduation; the days of overtime ending with the new car; the career ending with retirement.  But we rarely ponder the complete picture: life ending with eternity.  We work so hard and dedicatedly to achieve success on those other journeys; why is it so hard to persevere on the longest journey?  Why can’t we focus on the bigger picture?

I think part of the problem is that life is not a textbook.  We can’t read ahead.  We can’t skip to the ending.  Life is an on-going lesson, or lessons.  We are constantly learning; although the physical growth stops, the spiritual growth doesn’t.  The Second Letter of Peter explains it well.  Peter says you can grow from this world into the eternal divine nature by supplementing your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. (2Pt 1:5-7) You can see the steps Peter describes to grow in the divine nature, to become more like God until we become one with Him in Love.  It starts with learning virtues --- a focus and attitude of how to live life, and then an actual living of it.  And a gradual growth from focus on ourselves to a love of others.  God is Love.  That is what we are growing to be.  

Life is a school for us to learn.  Sometimes, in the moment we think that life just is.  No, only Jesus IS.  He said:  I AM.  We are changing --- we are supposed to change. He IS.  Recall the prayer I wrote about where Jesus says I am not the God of the past; My name is not I was.  I am not the God of the future; My name is not I will be.  My name is I AM.

I have many friends going through difficult life lessons.  They look at Jesus’ life and words and try to memorize and repeat them --- but they don’t seem to make sense.  They can recite formulas, but don’t see how they fit together.  It reminds me of one of my physics final exams; it was one question:  Describe the forces affecting a penny rolling on a table.  I recall turning the test paper over:  that is the entire exam??  That’s all?  On the surface it looked so simple, but it was the only final exam I ever failed.  I had skipped many of the classes along the way, choosing to work instead, although I had read and memorized the class text.  But I never really learned the lesson: all the motions and the forces affecting those motions build upon one another, supporting and opposing one another.  It was a good analogy for life.

We are not just rolling along.  There are forces impacting us, lessons to be learned and built upon: virtues, character to be built, actions to flow from what we know, deliberate actions, until they become who we are, a being made to love, as He was.

On any one day, there may be joys.  On any one day, there may be sorrows.  But, my friend, never think: This is what life is.  Never think the joys won’t end, and never despair that the sorrows won’t end.  They are but lessons to be lived on the journey.  Learn from them.