MONDAY MUSINGS

March 3, 2008

Time

When our church staff met last week, I invited a conversation about our family histories regarding the age when our parents died.  My mother died at the age of 97 and my father at the age of 63.  I commented that I have lived 10% longer than my father and so far my health is far better than his had been. 

While this can be a rather sobering conversation, it does prompt us to consider the influence of genetics, accidents, self-health strategies and pure luck.  Does my maleness make me more likely to follow the patterns of my father, or will my mother’s genetic traits dominate?   Will diet and healthy practices overcome the inborn tendencies that have almost predetermined the person I have become?

There are some who place so much emphasis on “the Great Hereafter” that the present seems robbed of its significance.  Make your way through this life as quickly as possible to receive the hoped for reward.  At the opposite extreme some would see extending our time on this earth as an end in itself, choosing every conceivable life-prolonging mechanism.  Families and medical personnel seek to balance the gray areas that separate techniques that would prolong life from those that merely postpone death.

Some of these musings and discussions were hypothetical in our younger years, but they become more timely as we age.  What have I done with the six plus years that I have been granted that my father was not?  What if I have another six plus years, as I hope I will?  Is a life measured in its length, or in its depth?  Does the gift of time carry with it a corresponding set of obligations?  How are we accountable for the added years most of us will enjoy that our grandparents did not have?

This may be a bit heavy for a Monday morning, but being created in the image of God almost mandates such soul-filled reflection.  We are not our own, as the Heidelberg Catechism says, but we do belong to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.  What we do with this precious gift of life is not an individual matter.  This gift requires a life-long conversation with the God who has made life possible.  I would be curious about your thoughts, what you are thinking about as you ponder your life in relation to God.  How about a cup of coffee and such a conversation?  Peace, John Krueger