Today’s Scripture Reading (February
1, 2013): Psalm 18
Question –
which statement causes you more stress - 1) You have run out of money or 2)
There is no God or meaning to life. My guess is that the answer to that
question depends on your life stage. Early in life, often it is the money
question. And I know this because people have phoned me and sat across my desk
and they are falling apart because they have run out of money – they have run up
the amounts on their credit cards until there is no more that they can put on
them and the bank refuses to raise their credit limit and they have borrowed
off of all of their friends and family (and have not repaid the debt) and now
rent is due and there is no money. And in the midst of all of this stress
sometimes I admit that I am tempted to say “at least you still have God” but I
am pretty sure that if I said that that they would throw things at me. And
often they are good Christian people, who believe in God and the Bible, but they
have never obeyed the biblical injunction to get their spending under control. And
at this moment, it is the lack of money that is of paramount importance.
But at some
point in time, late in life, our perspective changes. I have sat beside death
beds and the last subject that people wanted to talk to me about was the amount
of money sitting in their bank accounts. That lack of conversation has not been
because of the abundance of money in their lives. Sometimes they have had
nothing, but what is important is the second question – is there a God and is
their meaning to my life.
The reality
is that we realize that our ultimate enemy is not poverty; it is death. And the
closer we get to death, the more we are concerned about it. It is a very
natural process. I love the language in this Psalm, David says that he has been
confronted by death, and that confrontation has changed the priorities of his
life. He is more concerned about God and the meaning of life in the company of
death than he has ever been before.
Bronnie Ware
has spent time taking care of people at the end of life. And she has asked them
what regrets that they have and she has come up with two main ones. The first
is that people wish that they had the courage to live the life that they wanted
and not conformed to what others expected of them. This is an extension of the
meaning question – and of the God question. I believe that God has created you
for a purpose, and he has placed that purpose deep inside of you. And the one
thing that people regret as life closes is that they never had the courage to
live out that purpose. And the second regret is that they worked too much. Work
has taken them away from the most important parts of life. Death has a focusing
effect on us and as we are confronted by it, we begin to see or bring into
focus what is really important.
The tragedy
is that we do not have to wait until death confronts us to spend our time on
the things that are of ultimate importance. But maybe the bigger question is
neither of the first two asked. Maybe it is this – do I have the courage to
focus on what’s important in life before death forces my focus (and my regrets)
on those things? Do I have the courage to recognize the meaning and purpose that
God has placed inside of me? Maybe if we could focus on that while we are
younger, we would have less regrets as we are confronted by death.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2
Samuel 23
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