Recently I asked a few of my friends to fill in the rest of this sentence.
Life as if….
How would you answer? These are some of the responses I got.
- You would never see tomorrow.
- No offence was done to you.
- Your silence and action directly impacted those around you.
- Every day was taco tuesday
- No one is watching you dance.
Recently we have been studying a book on Friday nights by John Bevere called Driven by Eternity. We talked about 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 which says
“For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.
If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” (ESV)
How many well meaning Christians are going to get to the end of their lives and be described in the words of Paul when he said “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” (Phil 3:18,19)
Sometimes, usually when I am washing dishes or showering, I get as existential as a philosophy major on an LSD trip. I stare off into space and ask myself “what really matters? what is the point of it all? Am I wasting time? What am I supposed to be doing with my life?”
And the the apostle paul says to me “The outward man does indeed suffer wear and tear, but every day the inward man receives fresh strength. These little troubles (which are really so transitory) are winning for us a permanent, glorious and solid reward out of all proportion to our pain. For we are looking all the time not at the visible things but at the invisible. The visible things are transitory: it is the invisible things that are really permanent.” (2 Cor 4, Phillips)
I was recently perusing the threads in the suicide section at mentalhealth.net and a lot of people are incredibly articulate in coming to the conclusion that if this is all there is, then life kind of sucks.
It’s like Paul says again “For if the dead do not rise neither did Christ rise, and if Christ did not rise your faith is futile and your sins have never been forgiven. Moreover those who have died believing in Christ are utterly dead and gone. Truly, if our hope in Christ were limited to this life only we should, of all mankind be the most to be pitied!” (1 Cor 15, Phillips)
I want to live for eternity. I want to live as if I had already gotten to that day and seen the outcome of every action in my life. As if I had the enlightening gift of regret but could go back and change it.
As Vicktor Frankl says in the book Man’s Search for Meaning, “So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
I am not motivated by fear of judgment because I know who I am in Christ. I am motivated by knowing that I might someday wish I had done things differently.
Have you ever run a race but you didn’t know how far you had left to go? I have several times. I remember listening to my body and thinking ‘I better pace myself so I can actually make it’ only to find the finish line catch me by surprise.
Shoot! If I had only known it was so close I would have blown past those grandmas in front of me!
We spend so much time worrying about who to marry and where to live and 401k and all that jazz that by the time we start wondering what it’s about, it’s already over.
And it’s over so, so quickly in comparison with eternity. I feel like we will all wish we had lived differently in one way or another.
Live as if….
this is the prologue, the warmup, the great exam. Go all in, cause it’s a lot shorter than you think it is. Only what is done for his Kingdom will last.
On the final day I die
I want to hold my head up high
I want to tell You that I tried
To live it like a song
