Thoughts 5.9.22

What is it we are after? What is the achievement on the horizon? The ideal you have pictured for your future? What is the goal we are committed to seeing come to pass in our lives? That very thing you and I have justified the long hours on, the holy endeavor we have given permission to allow neglect on those closest to us in order to bring about, the vision we are willing to sacrifice eternal virtues for temporal endeavors. What is that beautiful and important task you have assigned to yourself. Building the church? Creating beauty? Writing something impactful? Money as a tool for perpetuating further good? Simply, more?

Is it worth it?

My answer today would be, yes. For I am tortured by greatness. I am pursuant of legacy. I am committed to making my existence mean something. However, would my 85 year old self answer the same way? Would he, or in your case maybe she, say: do it, run, hustle, build, sacrifice. Find a pursuit worthy of these things and your life will mean something. Or will our future selves say, abide. Savor. Love. I am learning the answer is probably somewhere in between. We have these gifts. These longings. These glorious and holy discontents embedded in our bones in order to push us into something more. And more is good. It is how we bring about heaven to earth. But my simple question for you and I today is to count the cost. Can we evaluate our mortal toil and ensure it is being outpaced by the infinite echoes we have the opportunity to call out in our lives and the lives of those around us. What is it that echoes in our lives? What exists beyond our sub-celestial existence? I would contend the eternal characteristics of our lives are laid out in Corinthians. “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” My prayer for myself, and my prayer for you, is that our lives would be built on faith, that they would be sustained by hope and humbly, that our legacy may be the cultivation the love we learned to extend beyond ourselves to those around us.