Life Worth Living
Hope promises that there will be a happy ending. God seems to like books … after all, He scripted the Bible. Once God’s Word is inscribed on our hearts, he inscribes our names in His Book of Life. I sometimes like to imagine that our lives fill veritable libraries in the unseen realm; that people who have already walked through life and look on from an unseen dimension, can thumb through our earthly existence, just like we might enjoy a gripping novel. There actually seems to be some indirect evidence for this in the Bible:
And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books … and anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
Rev 20:12 (NKJV)
and
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:15-17
When God has penned every detail of our life, then that makes for reading that just can’t be put down. Each chapter promises high adventure, noble quests, human heroism, conquering courage, victory over villainy, unexpected twists and turns, suspense-filled circumstances, divine drama, and pure perfection when the literary life-panorama is viewed from its unlikely beginnings to its exquisite end.
When I first asked God to be my Friend forever, I set out on a quest of bold experimentation. One day, as I had my elbows propped on my pillow, enjoying a few quiet moments with the Lord, I said, “Okay God, Hear what … I want to see something. If you could make such a masterful work of creating things out of nothing but your very breath, then I want to see what you will do with my life if I walk with you in faithfulness from one end of my life to the next. I want to see how my life is going to turn out. You are not short of genius or creativity, so if I give you perfect obedience in all things, where will life lead me? What beautiful tale will you make of my life?”
Now I have walked through a couple chapters of my tale and am stepping into the ones which lie ahead, and I can joyfully boast that there is no Story-Teller like my God! He has filled my journals with joy, he has given me a novel of nobility, He has walked me through travelogues of tears and triumph, and poured poetry into my days. I could not have asked for a fuller experience, and that is what the abundant life Jesus promised is really about – the bitter-sweet of life which complexifies who we are in Him, so that the maze of beauty which He is becomes deeply patterned within us.
The beautiful thing is that there is no “The End” in God. He writes on forever and ever. So the end of one chapter is the start of a more glorious one. God never returns to a former glory, and the wonderful comfort of it all is that no matter how the tale begins, God can weave it into something extraordinary. Jesus came as a helpless baby in a filthy manger but now sits triumphantly as the King of Kings. Joseph went from slavish poverty to a political prison to the highest position within Pharaoh’s palace. David went from being unceremoniously sidelined by his family to being ushered into Kingship and into the very genealogy of Christ; many tales; one Author; many lives; one Truth; many chapters; one perfect ending; many knees bent; one proclamation. God is the Alpha and the Omega - the Beginning and the End; and the One who knows the End from the Beginning. As long as God has written the tale, I can live within its pages. Life penned by God … is always worth living.
When God has penned every detail of our life, then that makes for reading that just can’t be put down. Each chapter promises high adventure, noble quests, human heroism, conquering courage, victory over villainy, unexpected twists and turns, suspense-filled circumstances, divine drama, and pure perfection when the literary life-panorama is viewed from its unlikely beginnings to its exquisite end.
When I first asked God to be my Friend forever, I set out on a quest of bold experimentation. One day, as I had my elbows propped on my pillow, enjoying a few quiet moments with the Lord, I said, “Okay God, Hear what … I want to see something. If you could make such a masterful work of creating things out of nothing but your very breath, then I want to see what you will do with my life if I walk with you in faithfulness from one end of my life to the next. I want to see how my life is going to turn out. You are not short of genius or creativity, so if I give you perfect obedience in all things, where will life lead me? What beautiful tale will you make of my life?”
Now I have walked through a couple chapters of my tale and am stepping into the ones which lie ahead, and I can joyfully boast that there is no Story-Teller like my God! He has filled my journals with joy, he has given me a novel of nobility, He has walked me through travelogues of tears and triumph, and poured poetry into my days. I could not have asked for a fuller experience, and that is what the abundant life Jesus promised is really about – the bitter-sweet of life which complexifies who we are in Him, so that the maze of beauty which He is becomes deeply patterned within us.
The beautiful thing is that there is no “The End” in God. He writes on forever and ever. So the end of one chapter is the start of a more glorious one. God never returns to a former glory, and the wonderful comfort of it all is that no matter how the tale begins, God can weave it into something extraordinary. Jesus came as a helpless baby in a filthy manger but now sits triumphantly as the King of Kings. Joseph went from slavish poverty to a political prison to the highest position within Pharaoh’s palace. David went from being unceremoniously sidelined by his family to being ushered into Kingship and into the very genealogy of Christ; many tales; one Author; many lives; one Truth; many chapters; one perfect ending; many knees bent; one proclamation. God is the Alpha and the Omega - the Beginning and the End; and the One who knows the End from the Beginning. As long as God has written the tale, I can live within its pages. Life penned by God … is always worth living.
Photo: my Japanese friend, Hisako
On behalf of Elise Haynes:
ReplyDeleteReading through "Life Worth Living" put a sparkle on the inside of me. I mean I feel so joyful that I just want to kick up my heels. It made me see and experience God intimately. I feel like I’m falling in love with love (for God is love); I walk through life with all its ups and downs and yet know that this life is worth living in the abundance that Jesus promised; promised to those who follow him. We can rest safely under the covering of His righteousness, and even when this life is over, know that there is so much more to look forward to in the next chapter of eternity – abundant life in God that overflows and just gets sweeter and sweeter.
The writer of Psalm 45 pens a beautiful poem to his King, in which he describes all the wonderful characteristics of His person (fairer than the sons of men, mighty, loves righteousness, hates wickedness, anointed with the oil of gladness, and so on). He also looks into the future and sees His perfected Bride - The Church (“at your right hand stands the queen in gold from Ophir … Her clothing is woven with gold”). He ends with a personal promise to remain eternally loyal to his Lord (“I will make your name to be remembered in all generations”). “Life Worth Living” reminds me of this Psalm.
Go on Neeka and make the gold of poetry come alive as you find treasures in the Word and bring them back to us; as you share your personal experiences; you have the pen of a ready writer (“my tongue is the pen of a ready writer” – Ps 45:1).