WORKS FOR ME III

LOOKING AT NOW IN THE LIGHT OF THE END

“Oh Lord, make me to know my end and what is the measure of my days;

Let me know how fleeting I am!  Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!”

Psalm 39:4,5

The request could work either way.  If I see how short my life on earth really is I will run around quickly trying to experience and grab all that I can.  The other way I could respond would be to find out the few things I really love and simply hone in on them.  In my life I have done both and I found the second response the most fulfilling.

In my youth I was very inwardly competitive and wanted to be the best that I could be at what I did.  There was a sense of self importance, that whatever I did mattered to the world and I wanted the acclaim and reputation of excelling in what ever I put my energy into.  Somehow I wanted to make a mark and let the world know that “Pat was here”.  Of course I cloaked that in great humility, which I also wanted to excel in.  Unfortunately my sense of self importance didn’t match my skill set and ability and I didn’t leave the mark I was meaning to.  But in the end it worked well for my quest for great humility, time and time again.

As I grew older I honed in on the things I loved doing and lost my concern for acknowledgement and reputation.  I wanted the inner peace and satisfaction of doing few things and doing them well.  I grew more contemplative.  I was less stressed, less busy, less concerned about what others thought about me, less concerned about a reputation and making a mark.  Now I do what I love which is more on the path that I believe God planned for me to begin with.

What I love is God and all of His creation.  Honing my relationship with Him and with all of His creation is all that truly matters to me these days.  Once I got that right all else simply fell into place; my relationship with other people, with nature, and with the world in general.  God is a God of relationship.  He begins in the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and that flows out into His relationship with all of His creation.  It is simply the way things are meant to work.

When I see the end of His Story it helps me work out my life story in the moments of here and now.  In the end I will dwell in relationship with God in the spirit of worship of Him and unity with others who have received and believed in His name.  Why not start that now by worshipping God and developing those relationships with those one anothers, those who now are and those who are yet to be?  God created His people to be one another to one another.  The older I get the more I see this simple truth.

Sometimes I wish I lived backwards, being born older and wiser.  I certainly would have eliminated some foolish choices I made.  Maybe the best advice I can give to the young ones today is to consider David’s prayer.  “Oh Lord, make me to know my end…”.  It works for me.