Photo courtesy of Fey Marin on Unsplash
“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-4
Our lives are made up of seasons, and typically we move fairly smoothly from one season to the next. Babies don’t stay babies, children do grow up, and we typically grow old. Life is a mix of the good and bad, beginnings and ends. One of the important writers of the French Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne, commented on the investment we should choose to make in life: “The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them….Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.”
I’m of an age where there is an expectation that those you know are going to die. We will all die, but we typically don’t consider our own deaths. When we see someone close to us pass away, it’s the exclamation mark of the truth that our own demise is coming.
I’m not being morbid. I have no death wish. But this week I got a call from my son, informing me that his mother-in-law had passed quietly in her sleep. She had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, Lou Gherig’s disease. Her past several months had been more than difficult for her and her family. But Cathy was a trooper; she didn’t complain.
I appreciated Cathy deeply. We had been in and out of each other’s lives since our kids married one another fourteen years ago. She was smart, opinionated, strong, and caring. She coached high school women’s sports, taught, and eventually became a school administrator.
She did everything with excellence. Death for her came sooner than she would have liked. Sooner than any of us would have liked.
We don’t live every day anticipating our death, but we should live every day anticipating life lived to the fullest. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.” We waste so much of our time spiraling out of control over things that don’t matter, things we can’t control, and things that take away from our dignity and character.
Jesus spoke clearly of the force that seeks to undo our hope in life. He referred to this evil as the thief, the one whose native language is lying. “The Thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” John 10:10. Jesus’ desire for us is to thrive in life, being the best of us we can be.
We all have an expiration date. Life itself will throw curveballs at us, through illnesses, challenging circumstances, and losses of all kinds. But we should have the attitude of the late Pope Paul VI: “Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it!” That’s how Cathy lived.
What keeps you from living life fully?
Photo courtesy of Davide Regusa on Unsplash
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