Category: Life challenges

Grief

dried-red-roses

Grief is the deepest, most pained outpouring of love.
For how can we grieve if we have not first loved?
And how can we love, without knowing in our heart of hearts we may yet one day pay the price of grief?

Grief is a stroll in the valley of the shadow of death,…
and yet this is a place we need not fear to tread.
The valley is green: there are blossoms, there is light;
There are many coloured rainbows of memory erupting in our hearts.

Grief can change us, by making us more thoroughly human than we were.
Death can be swallowed up by a more vibrant grasp of the precious value of life.
The end of one season can pave the way for the beginning of something new.
The treasure of the past can forge a greater determination for the future.

Grief can reveal to us where our true treasure lies,
its pain fuelling us ever onward, toward the joy of restoration.
For is death the end? No, death is not the end.
Death is only the beginning.

I see Love standing over the grave, beckoning, waiting:
A greater Love, a truer Love;
A Love of beauty, and passion.

The Light is overcoming the shadow,
forever.

Time

sands-of-time

It has been said that our most precious commodity is not money, but time.
In my forties I now wholeheartedly agree.
Some say, ‘Time is money,’ but I say, ‘No.’
Time transcends money.
Time can be spent in many ways: the pursuit of money is but one of them.
A lifetime can be defined in many ways.

In what way do we want our lives defined?
How should we spend our set time?
What is of most importance in life?
Where does our true treasure lie?

The clock shows us that we are finite.
Our mortality shows us there are choices to make: priorities to establish.
What are your priorities?
What is of most importance, when time has run out?

Mortality

Here’s today’s insert from: The heart of a kiwi Christian: a personal journey

25/3/17 Mortality

autumn-in-park-1444151447zte

I’ve been reflecting on my own mortality, and suddenly realized: mortality is a gift! Wow: that’s radical! As Solomon wrote in Proverbs in the Old Testament, there is a time to live and a time to die: and I’m beginning to become grateful for it.

In our lives, we track down a path of different seasons: birth, childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle age – that’s me now – older age, and then comes death. We’re wired for it, these different stages: our lives flow out in a pattern of the seasons. The reality of the seasons changes us: we are different in middle age, more formed, more complete, than in early adulthood, and a grasping and accepting of our own mortality changes us too. It brings a freedom, the acceptance of death – a greater and deeper freedom to live.

What would it feel like, I wonder, if we were not wired for perhaps 70- 100 years: if we were, rather, wired for 500- 1000 years, like some of the figures of the Old Testament? What would that look like? Two hundred years of adolescence? Two hundred years of early adulthood? Or would it be full development for hundreds of years: a full offering of oneself over a long period of time for the sake of others?

I don’t know what it means to live a thousand years: but I do know what is has meant to live forty years. I’m grateful for life, but now, suddenly, I find myself also grateful for death. The reality of death can forge us: it can form us. The acceptance of death can free us: the awareness of our own mortality can inform us and release us into a deeper expression of our own humanity.

I’m glad to be merely mortal: I embrace my own mortality. Death, now, has become my friend, in setting my life free.

There is a time to live and a time to die.

What’s the deal about money?

What do you make of money? Is it a friend? A master? What’s it all for?

Jesus made the comment that for someone who wants to serve God, it’s pretty hard serving money as well.

‘No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.’ NIV Bible Luke 6:24

But what if we’re slaving away in 60 hour weeks just to cover costs for our families?

What do you think: is life really about money, or is there more to life than this?