Monday, December 01, 2003
Life is short. As I told the fellowship of believers yesterday, one of my greatest fears is that I will live a mundane life of insignificance, not making the difference I could make.
Lewis Smedes underscored this in a profound way before his death with the following thought.
I bought a brand new date book yesterday, the kind I use every year - spiral-bound, black imitation leather covers wrapped around pages and pages of blank squares. Every square has a number to tell me which day of the month I’m in at the moment. Every square is a frame for one episode of my life. Before I’m through with the book, I will fill the squares with classes I teach, people with whom I ate lunch, everlasting committee meetings I sit through, and these are only the things I cannot afford to forget. I fill the squares too with things I do not write down for me to remember: thousands of cups of coffee, some lovemaking, some praying, and, I hope, gestures of help to my neighbors. Whatever I do, it has to fit inside one of those squares on my date book. I live one square at a time. The four lines that make up the square are the walls of time that organize my life. Everything I do has to fit into one square. Each square has an invisible door that leads to the next square. As if by a silent stroke, the door opens and I am pulled through, as if by a magnet, sucked into the next square in line. There I will again fill the time frame that seals me - fill it with my business just as I did the square before. As I get older, the squares seem to get smaller. One day, I will walk into a square that has no door. There will be no mysterious opening and no walking into an adjoining square. One of the squares will be terminal. I do not know which square it will be.
I would like to make some difference today with the square I'm on. Wouldn't you?
Ps 90:5-6 You sweep men away in the sleep of death;
they are like the new grass of the morning- though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.
Lewis Smedes underscored this in a profound way before his death with the following thought.
I bought a brand new date book yesterday, the kind I use every year - spiral-bound, black imitation leather covers wrapped around pages and pages of blank squares. Every square has a number to tell me which day of the month I’m in at the moment. Every square is a frame for one episode of my life. Before I’m through with the book, I will fill the squares with classes I teach, people with whom I ate lunch, everlasting committee meetings I sit through, and these are only the things I cannot afford to forget. I fill the squares too with things I do not write down for me to remember: thousands of cups of coffee, some lovemaking, some praying, and, I hope, gestures of help to my neighbors. Whatever I do, it has to fit inside one of those squares on my date book. I live one square at a time. The four lines that make up the square are the walls of time that organize my life. Everything I do has to fit into one square. Each square has an invisible door that leads to the next square. As if by a silent stroke, the door opens and I am pulled through, as if by a magnet, sucked into the next square in line. There I will again fill the time frame that seals me - fill it with my business just as I did the square before. As I get older, the squares seem to get smaller. One day, I will walk into a square that has no door. There will be no mysterious opening and no walking into an adjoining square. One of the squares will be terminal. I do not know which square it will be.
I would like to make some difference today with the square I'm on. Wouldn't you?
Ps 90:5-6 You sweep men away in the sleep of death;
they are like the new grass of the morning- though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.
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