October 24 Where There is Life There is hope

Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward. Even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished. Never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun. ~Ecclesiastes 9:4-6 

To you, O Lord, I called. To the Lord I cried for mercy: “What gain is there in my destruction, in my going down into the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me; O Lord, be my help.” You turned my wailing into dancing. You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord, my God, I will give You thanks forever.” ~Psalm 30:8-12 

“Where there is life there is hope.” Sometimes this is the phrase that keeps us going when all looks hopeless. Did you know that according to the experts, more than 90 per cent of what we fear never happens? When you make it through a challenge, and you’re alive to tell about it, looking back, was it as bad as you feared? We are so good at horriblizing aren’t we? 

Think about it, if you’re reading this, you must be alive, so, you have hope! It is now, while we are alive, that we have all the opportunity that we will have to learn, grow and serve others. We were created for a purpose and if we’re still alive, our purpose is still being fulfilled. Once we’re gone, our opportunity goes with us. There is no second chance on this earth in that way anyway. I do believe that while we are alive, God gives us opportunity after opportunity to serve, trust, and obey, but then, at our death, all the influence that we may have had is finished and after that, there is eternity. 

I’m a city boy. I’m used to going to the store when I need to get something I want or need to replace. Kathy grew up on a small dairy farm. Her mother had a huge vegetable garden and did a lot of canning and pickling and freezing. Her father was a hunter gatherer type. The store to them was for the extras. In the summer, the whole family would go out with coffee cans as buckets with wires across the top for handles. In them they would collect the blue and black berries that grew in the woods around their house. 

One Summer, I was invited to go along. It was hot and there were tons of flies. Not quite what I was used to coming from the city. My Father-in-law handed me a can and said, “There’s tons of blueberries this year! Git all you want!” So, I picked blueberries. I also ate as many as I wanted. When we got back home, I had about a half a can full. This did not impress my Father-in-Law to say the least. We had a differing interpretation of what, “Git all you want,” meant. I only wanted to get a half a can. I got tired of picking. I’d had enough of eating them. Besides, if I wanted blueberries I could just go to the store and get more. 
To my Father-in-Law, “Git all you want,” really meant “Fill that can!” Now was the moment. If the berries weren’t picked now the opportunity would be lost until next Summer to have berries for Mom’s jams and jellies and blueberry pies. “Git all you want,” meant pick until you can pick no more so that we have plenty to enjoy for the entire year. There’s no telling when the opportunity will come again or what the bushes will produce next year. Now was the time, if blueberries were to be had. 

I think that too often, our approach to life is similar to my attitude toward the can of blueberries. We don’t always appreciate the urgency that is intended in our proverbs for today. This may be a little hard for me to say, but I believe that God wants us to approach life more with my Father-in-Law’s attitude toward those blueberries. Dad saw a bumper crop and if we didn’t pick it, the birds and bears would. What did Jesus say about the fields are white into harvest? (Matthew 9:37)

We don’t know what our future holds. We should be wise to take advantage of the opportunity that we have before us to do good and serve while it is here and not assume it will come round again. “Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me. O Lord, be my help.” 

Step 10 in Celebrate Recovery says: “We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.” In practice, what this means is that at the end of the day, we should be willing to look over our day and evaluate how we walked with God today. Did we serve Him well? Did we offend or hurt anyone so that we need to make amends? Did we use every opportunity for His glory? Did we git all the good we could out of the day?

Would God be pleased with how we lived today and sign His name at the end of it with a “Well done!” We can only do this while we are here. If we know we have pleased God with how we lived this day, what else really matters? But we usually end up with only half or maybe even less. Then: “You turned my wailing into dancing. You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.” That’s the gospel of forgiveness and grace singing in our hearts. And that makes me want to do better tomorrow.

Prayer: Father, thank You for today to live for you. Let me feel your amazing Grace and love move me to serve and love and bring glory to your name. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Song: Life Song