One. Perhaps, if well-endowed with years, occupying a century. Perhaps, if possessing a gift of wisdom, leaving many with lessons worth remembering. Perhaps, if used faithfully, a road sign saying "All you've ever truly searched for can be found in Jesus the Messiah". Perhaps is a word pregnant with potential. It is poised like a spinning top, ready to fall to one side or another at any moment.
Life is a journey. Life is a dance. Life is a race. They say lots of things in attempts to put parameters around something so grand, as if to fence in a rainbow.
When I try to think about life, it feels almost as futile as counting stars. Life is abstractions like joy and wonder. Life is particulars like 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the number of squares on a checkerboard. Life it the coming together of abstractions and particulars, like the way you feel when you walk across a stage and they hand you a piece of paper that says "we'll mail your diploma soon".
Some talk about it in terms of a life force, some mysterious power that flows through people and things, holding the universe together. It takes on the personality of an electric current, animating the things it flows through. Some talk about it in terms of being all there is. Life, death and the dirt they bury you in. There is no mysterious anything, it's best if you just mind your own business and try to enjoy what you've got.
What about the phloem? Cells that live in the stems of plants to help move water from one part to another. What about the way you feel when someone you love very much dies? Feelings that go deeper than words because of a relationship between two human hearts. Ooey gooey butter cake? If life was just being born and dying or just mysterious force, what's the use of ooey gooey butter cake? Length of life is quantified in time. Quality of life is quantified in relationships and legacy. More fence posts around the rainbow.
Trout have speckles. Cedar chips smell good. Love for someone moves you to attempt the impossible. And to think, something so full of promise and pain and we only sit crosslegged atop the tip of the iceberg. We're only here for a few years. There's a world brimming with people to meet, markets to wander through, and sunsets to get lost in. There will be horrors unspeakable and emotional scars of conflicts unforgiven. But we are given our small sliver of the timeline to inhabit how we choose.
Teach us, O Lord, to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. - Psalms
Grant us the eyes to see the hearts that hurt, the ears to hear the glory of cellos, and the wherewithal to appreciate the smell of biscuits in the oven.
LMS
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