What could life be like? Interested in an amazing career? Want to scale a major mountain? Is it possible to get the maximum out of life? Does the ultimate experience appeal to you? Would you like to be wanted, needed, and accepted; just the way you are?
I continue to ask those questions, just as if I was getting started on life. Variations on these themes seem to be the cadence of our times. People are searching, refusing to settle for seconds! Women want everything. Men are not willing to settle for yesterday’s model. Minorities refuse to live the abuse and bigotry of old. People want more, yet the frustration of getting less seems to permeate everything. Could things really be wide and open? Could it be for everyone, not just a select few?
Advertising in all forms continues to subtly promise more and deliver less. Gone are the crazy explicit days, now we are in the implied potential of what might be with no accountability for what is. We pursue harder and longer and settle for something smaller and shorter. Yet, we hope, believe, and know in our hearts that there is more to life than we are seeing, getting, and living.
In my own journey I know of the frustration, anger, and thirst. These feeling are real, tangible, and heart tearing. People are facing real pain; bodies deformed from birth through no apparent fault of the one who suffers. People live with a sense of the diminishing, tethered by terminal diseases all of kinds. Yet, there are those who face all with a smile and knowing grin.
What is your secret I ask?
The answer sounds almost like a clich?. “The Fear-of-God expands our life; a wicked life is a puny life.” (Proverbs 10.27) Yet, my own experience confirms its truth.
I cannot life another’s life; definitely never make you choice. I do not understand the whys and reasons of things around me, yet I know God is real. This God of love, grace, and acceptance gives us wide and open life.
