Life keeps changing

"And life: since even if no other good were the result of life, it is desirable in itself."

Aristotle, Rhetoric

Life is beautiful. There's just something about it! I'm alive, and I'm glad of it! You only get this one chance at living, and soon it will be gone.  Soon I'll be leaving for college just like my sister. Soon I'll be buying my first house. Soon I'll be in a rocking chair holding my first grandchild. (Well, maybe not that soon.) But life keeps coming at you. I'm going to miss her so much, but LIFE is here. It keeps knocking on the door, letting you know that things are changing. Goodbye, everything I was used to. One of my good friends gave me some wisdom once. Old friends are going, but you will have new friends, and you don't have to lose the old friends. It will be different -- but sometimes different is even better than before. It doesn't have to be miserable :) Change isn't always bad. (But when everything is changing for the worse, remember the one who never changes. The one whose love is unchanging, unfailing, unrelenting. That one who keeps pursuing and never will stop.)


I once heard the prayer "Lord, thank you for waking me up this morning." You know, we don't deserve this kind of treatment. When did I ever deserve another minute of this life? I really appreciate being here this morning, God. He chose to wake me up this morning, and I will use that gift with everything else he's given me.

Because life is hard, but it's worth it.

John Mayer - Heart of Life [i know that the heart of life is good]


(photo by Giselle Morgan)

What for?

"The awful question: What for? which had shattered all his intellectual edifices in the past, no longer existed for him. To that question: What for? a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair of a man's head falls."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Yeah, we've all thought it. probably more than once. WHAT FOR? Why am I even alive? what's the point? do I matter at all? and more than once, you've probably come to the conclusion... pointless. pointless. like the constant barrage of rain on a rooftop. it's pointless.

Qoheleth, the writer of Ecclesiastes, agrees: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” (Ecc. 1:2) See? There's just pointlessness. Day after day, it's all the same. We go on, going on, living this painful life. I see people every day, living this pointless life, pointlessly. They don't know why they live so they just do anything to try to get some sort of meaning. If this is all there is, I'd better live it up while I can...right? 


One of the main characters in War and Peace, Pierre, has the world: A beautiful and glamorous wife, so much money he can't spend it fast enough, and the ability to do whatever he wants. So he does do whatever he wants, and every day is tormented by "Why am I living?" because it didn't fulfill. Only at the end of the book, when his life has been stripped of everything and he lives as an army prisoner, does he find what he's looking for. In that simplicity, suffering exists, yet God exists as well -- and God is bigger. Because there is certainty in who God has revealed himself to be, we can have purpose, even if we don't know what's going to happen in this life.

"Two things I know: that he is good, and he is strong."
~(Author unknown)