Colossians 3:2 “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
The results of a recent study conducted on senior citizens captured my attention. When asked whether there was anything they would change if given the opportunity to live their lives over again, three answers dominated the responses:
1) they would be more reflective
2) they would take more risks
3) they would focus less on the impermanent
As Donald Miller puts it in his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, our stories get “stolen by the lure of the easy life.” God has granted us the high privilege of joining with him to write our story…stories he intends to use to transform the world. Our part begins when we allow him to edit, revise, expand and complete the manuscripts of our lives. It can be grueling at times, painful, costly. We will most certainly encounter a great deal of uncertainty. But isn’t that true of all stories worth reading? You’ll never find themes of comfortable predictability on the New York Times bestseller list.
Once we encounter the Author of the real story of our lives we can never again find satisfaction in just living our story for ourselves. We discover a sense of meaning derived from realizing we are a part of a tale that is bigger, a tale more fulfilling, a tale eternal. The dots connect. The grains run deeper. A certainty we belong in this universe emerges. So don’t be like those senior citizens in the study. Don’t get to the end of your life and wish you had reflected more, risked more, and tried harder to resist the momentary.
The world needs your story….