Living Life For A Living

I've had more than a few conversations lately about how short life is, and how time seems to fly by more and more quickly, the older I get.  

I was talking to a friend who said it feels like she just woke up one day and her daughter was grown and in college.  "Where did my little girl go?" she told me. 

I had to agree.  My eldest son and his wife are moving to Chicago this week so he can attend law school.  That very sentence makes me shake my head in disbelief.  

Where did the time go?  How can I have a kid that's married AND going to law school? And why am I asking myself these things in italics?

The way I see it, you have a couple of choices when it comes to the life you've been given:  You can decide to embrace every moment and live it to the fullest, or not.  It's kind of that simple.  

God knows I've spent my fair share of days not really living life for a living. Those days are easily forgotten, and they all seem to run together.  

The days that are memorable are the ones spent doing eternal things--laughing, loving, serving, worshipping, restoring, resurrecting, feasting, celebrating and giving.  

And even the days we spend weeping, repenting, praying and fasting are full of life, and are holy in their own right.  

In her incredible poem When Death Comes, Mary Oliver delivers this bit of lasting wisdom:  

When it's over, I want to say: all my life 
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real. 
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, 
or full of argument.  

I don't want to end up simply having visited the world.

For those of us who claim to follow Jesus, we must always embrace the fact that he came to help us understand what it means to live life in abundance.  This was Jesus' mission--one that lives on by the power of the Spirit and in the hearts of the faithful.  May it be so for you.  

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.