What will you say if a child asks?

I like to encourage people to seek the answers to what I believe are the key questions of life.  I suggest this, in part, because I know that children will at some time or another confront the grown-ups in their lives with a need for answers.  The answers we give them will not provide the final word on the subject but will give them various points of reference for developing their own answers as adults.

These key questions are the building blocks for what is called a "World View"  Everyone has a world view of some kind or another. It forms the foundation for everything we say and do.

In general a person's world view can be defined by answering the following questions:

1) Where do we come from?  How did we get here?

2) What determines our standards for right and wrong?

3) What is our purpose?  Why are we here?

4) Where do we go after this life?  What happens when we die?

In summary, a person's world view is made up of their answers to questions about origin, morality, meaning and destiny.

The book "Have a Little Faith” challenges the reader to examine their world view, to answer these questions for themselves. The author, Mitch Albom, does not prescribe a specific path but suggests that we all have a need to be part of something bigger than ourselves. I agree with this whole-heartedly. Erwin McManus writes, "If life was just about me it wouldn’t be very interesting or fulfilling".

What is my advice regarding this? Avoid becoming trapped inside the comfort, safety and security of the “Small World of Self”. Take the risk of reaching out beyond yourself to something bigger.

Deeper Water

Life is easy when the weather is warm, the water refreshing, and we can touch bottom. But what happens when we are pushed into deeper water, with stormy skies, tossed by waves, exhausted from treading water, and chilled to the bone? I have found the help I need when life takes me into deeper water.  I am so grateful for His sacrifice, His forgiveness, and the new life He offers us. The "Wild Goose" (of Celtic tradition), the "Paraclete", the "Rider of the Wind", the "Spirit of Jesus" is now along side me, lifting me up on wings like eagle's.  He comes along side me in good times and bad. Everything in life is now redeemable and worthwhile, filled with His purpose.

This quote from Malcolm Muggeridge echoes my thoughts and feelings about the only person we can put our hope in:

“We look back on history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of ‘the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.’

“In one lifetime I have seen my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, ‘God who’s made the mighty would make them mightier yet.’ I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian proclaim to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own assumption of power. I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Ashoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius. I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that Americans, had they so wished, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.

“All in one little lifetime. All gone with the wind. England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

“All in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

“Behind the debris of these self-styled, sullen supermen and imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope. The person of Jesus Christ.”

What would I say on my last day?

The first thing I would say is how much I love my wife, my family, and my friends and then I would try to provide some insight into an age old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

The problem with this question (at this stage of our journey) is that no one is totally good or totally bad. The Bible says that the sunshine and rain come down on both the good and the bad alike.

For now the labels “Good” or “Bad” are not permanent ones. God has planned for the wheat and the weeds to grow together. If we prematurely try to make the distinction between the wheat and the weeds we risk pulling out weeds that may eventually become wheat.

I believe that God is an “equal opportunity” creator, in that all people have the chance to be restored to a relationship with the one who made us. This is why we are encouraged to “Love our Enemies” because these weeds may eventually open the door to God’s transformation.

I believe that this age of human-kind is:

- a classroom
- a proving or testing ground
- an opportunity for many free choices
- an age of grace and forgiveness offered
- an opportunity to build character, to be refined by fire
- not a time of final reward or final consequences
- an age brimming with potential growth and transformation
- a time I call the “Age of Caterpillars” with the opportunity to soar as butterflies

This is a critical age of choices and decisions for each one of us. Gordon Lightfoot touches on this issue in his song “Waiting for You”. He sings, “I could be tossed in the arms of the sea. I could get caught between decks eternally. Waiting for you to ask what’s keeping me.

Are we going to be left behind as caterpillars constantly searching for the best leaf salad we can scrounge up for ourselves?

Are we going to struggle with the storms of life only to sink to the sea-bottom “caught between decks eternally?”

Or instead, are we going to soar into the wide-open spaces of God rather than being trapped in “The Small World of Self?”