Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Facet 2 - Paradigm Spirituality; Chapter 4 - Life's a journey, where are we going?
Onward... "Biblical realism requires a grasp of the brevity of our sojourn on earth so that our hope is fixed not on the prospects of this passing world but on the promises of the everlasting God. A growing realization of our mortality should cause us to treasure the opportunities of the present." In this chapter, let's suppose you have one day to live, now what?? Read pages 57-64 and consider life...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
If you knew you had only one more year to live, how would ou spend your time, and how would this differ from the way you are presently spending your time?
ReplyDeleteSadly, there's a lot I would do differently. I'd probably work part time for a while. Travel with my family. Make sure my "legacy" was in place. I think the "small stuff" in life would completely be eliminated from consideration. Overall, I would want to enjoy things I like (e.g., the beach) with those Iove.
DeleteTo what degree are you aware of your mortality in your feelings and experience? Why is it helpful to cultivate this awareness?
ReplyDeleteWith my perspective of being a Vietnamese orphan who should be dead anyway, I think about this quite a bit. Without the context of Christ's devine will for my life, nothing really makes sense in my life. With this perspective, I am freer to continue to look for and know there is and will be a purpose for my life. If nothing else, I raise my kids to love and serve Him.
DeleteWhat are the implications in your life and thinking of a temporal versus an eternal perspective? Do you sense yourself being pulled in both directions? How does this affect our value system?
ReplyDeleteWhen I have a temporal perspective I focus on achievements. I have the delusion that if I work hard enough I can actually accomplish something noteworthy (I know that this is ludicrous when looking at the grand scheme of world events - but that would take up an entirely different blog post). However, when I have an eternal perspective I focus more on people, because everything on this earth is passing away. Only people and God's Word will last forever, so I should focus my time on those things.
DeleteThe difficulty is that I must strike a balance between these two. The danger of focusing too much on the temporal is obvious: I become self-centered and neglect things of eternal importance. Becoming too (or wrongly) focused on the eternal makes me miss out on opportunities and even responsibilities on earth.
I believe the balance is being able to keep the eternal things at the top of my priority list and using the temporal opportunities to work towards those ends during the precious few years I have on Earth - without getting distracted by them. Use the temporal, but don't get distracted by it - I think that is the key
I agree with Steve. I know when I am not centered on Him when I start stewing over work things like title, salary and how I can "get ahead". The irony in this is that I've tested and saw the results of testing Him by trying to walk in His will - the results are fantastic! And the icing on the cake is that I don't worry about those work things - because they ultimately don't matter. When I started realizing I needed to ask God to put me where He needed me, instead of give me XYZ job with ABC title, He was free to creatively make the way and circumstance to not only do His will, but also to provide me all the other blessings. Don't limit God by asking for what you think you want...
DeleteIf you were granted two hundred years of healthy life on this planet, how would you invest your time? What would you seek to achieve with this additional time and opportunity? How does this relate to your view of activity in heaven?
ReplyDelete