Life is precious.
It is a statement that many of us make. I have said it. Perhaps you have too. I meant it. But probably, if I am completely honest, I mostly meant it in a detached, theoretical sort of a way.
In a span of 48 hours last week, I was reminded just how true that phrase is.
Life is precious.
At about 3:30 am on a Thursday morning my wife and I got into the car to drive 4 hours to Indianapolis. My daughter was to have a C-section shortly after we arrived. My first granddaughter was born 10 days early. A somewhat scary lead up followed by anticipation and joy and a perfect new life.
In their 2004 song “Miracle Drug”, U2 sang “Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby’s head.” Some critics thought it was more than a bit indulgent as I recall. I would probably sub out freedom for love or truth or meaning, but I get the sentiment, the down deep reminder that life is precious.
It matters. It means something.
That was Thursday.
Friday, we had to head home. We weren’t planning to right away, but we had to deal with something that simply couldn’t wait. Our dog Abby. 13-and-a-half-year-old smooth coat golden doodle. She had been having a lot of problems lately. Tumors, dementia of a sort, and more. She was in pain. And it came to a head while we were gone. So on Saturday morning we had to take her to the vet to have her “put to sleep.” One of the hardest things I have had to do.
48 hours. Highs and lows.
To be sure, as much as I loved my dog, there is no comparison between her and my granddaughter. It is also the case that I liked her a lot more than a lot of people.
Life is precious.
We live in a world of outrage and offense, of angst and anger, of drama and disdain all too often aimed at people we don’t know because of other people we don’t know. Slights become the catalyst for eruptions. Sides are chosen. Decency is forgotten. Lives are often irreparably changed.
Because we forget that life is precious.
We sell it short. We think only of ourselves or perhaps, maybe, those we think of as close to us. Those opposed to us for big or small reasons—who cares? Let them suffer. They don’t matter. They disrespected us, broke the rules, believed the wrong thing, dressed the wrong way, behaved the wrong way, called out the way we behave. The reasons, the issues, the teams don’t really matter. Because one way or another we all seem to have been infected by a pervasive and persuasive belief that life only matters in relation to me, what I want, what makes me happy.
But in point of fact, often we aren’t even chasing what makes us happy. We are chasing outrage and anger. We are chasing what an algorithm tells us to chase. What is knows we will respond to. And the preciousness of life recedes further and further into the background.
The irony of a world in which it has never been easier to live a long and healthy life producing a growing ambivalence toward the preciousness that is life is not lost on me. We insulate ourselves from the messiness of life wherever possible, especially death, thinking to blunt the pain and the unpleasantness. In the process we rob ourselves of a reminder of the preciousness of life. Birth and death bring it home to us in ways that few other things can.
Death is an affront to the reality of life, the sacredness of life. It is the antithesis of life. It is the necessary consequence of choosing against God because he IS life and he grants that life to us. Death is not arbitrary. When you choose against life you get death. And yet, for all its power, death itself shows us how precious life is. When we come face to face with it, we are forced to recognize how fragile, how precious life is. It truly is a gift. A gift we must refuse to take for granted.
Life is precious.
That means the life of the person I don’t like. The one who is wrong. The one who is other. The pagan. The ambivalent. The political rival. The one who is opposed to everything I hold dear. The one I love. The one I take for granted. The . . .
Life is precious.
John tells us in Jesus was life, “and that life was the light of men” (Jn. 1:4). Jesus says he is the way, the truth, and the life (Jn. 14:6). Life, truth, and a way of being in the world are not separable. Because Jesus IS these things. Life is true. Life means following the way of Jesus. our half-truths and outright lies, our stumbles and backtracking, our intentional departures from the path all point to the fact that even when we believe, we are, as the hymnwriter said “prone to wander.” In myriad ways we choose a slow and creeping death, thinking it gives sustenance that only life—Jesus—can give.
Jesus says he is the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:25). Jesus defeats death. In 1 Cor. 15, Paul is quite clear, death has been swallowed up in victory—the victory of Christ whose very death was the means of undoing it once and for all.
Because life is precious.
As followers of Jesus, we are supposed to look like the one we follow. We are supposed to recognize the preciousness of life and live accordingly. But too often we let the concerns and cares of our immediate circumstances, not to mention the world’s background operating systems, blur our vision and blunt our ability to recognize the truth.
Life is precious. Walk in it
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