Life – What were you hoping for?

We are born as helpless babies and for our first few years we can’t survive without constant care.  Then we are little children and we learn every day, but we still need to be protected and watched over.  Then we become young adults and we think we know everything, but we really don’t.  Then sometime around our early twenties we come face to to face with the reality of providing for ourselves, and maybe even a spouse and our own children.  Life then becomes a series of mountain top and valley low experiences, some times are great, some very tough, but somehow we survive, and how we come out of those times, in many ways, defines us.

One day we realize that we are becoming older.  We see our bodies change, our thoughts change, our priorities change.  We are the product of everything that has happened to us, up to this time.  Every one of us goes through this progression.  Soon we are elderly, and I can’t say too much about that because that part of my journey has not yet come, but does lie around the corner if God desires me to  stay here a little longer.

When I was a young man, my mother and father were big Frank Sinatra fans.  I heard his records played constantly when I was young.  I became a Sinatra fan too.  I think he was one of the greatest singers of all times.  Frank Sinatra was known for his voice, he was admired and loved for his voice.  I am not so much a fan of Sinatra the man though.  He certainly had his good side, he was, I’ve read, very generous, faithful to his friends, appreciative of his fans, and  he worked hard on his craft.  He also was in many failed marriages, fought battles with alcohol and drugs, was associated with criminals, and in the end was as tragic a figure, as he was famous. There is a print you may have seen in stores of an old time 50’s diner with a number of movie stars sitting around the counter;  Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Marlon Brando are several of the people depicted.  The are all Hollywood icons, and they too all died after having had somewhat tragic lives.

Elvis Presley was once credited as saying, “I’m a prisoner of my dreams coming true.”  Every year Time and People magazines do an issue called the 100 most important people in the world, or something to that affect.  Doug Blair is never on that list, though Oussama Ben Laden has been!   I know what you’re thinking, who is Doug Blair?Doug Blair was my employer when I worked for Richland-Conrich Energy some years ago.  Doug was co-owner of the company and I answered directly to him.  He was like a second father to me.  He mentored me, and helped me provide for my family.  He was a good man, he cared about his employees, and his community.  He was loved and admired by his many friends and he had a reasonable concept of himself.  He probably did more for more people than anyone sitting in the diner, in that painting, but he wasn’t famous.

We live in a world that says if you are not famous, you’ve failed.  Why is that?  We are, human beings, and as a group insecure.  We need, and want to be accepted, and when we get accepted we want more than that, we want to be admired, loved, and worshiped, we want to be famous!  We make a fatal mistake in believing that once the world accepts us, and loves us, then we can love ourselves.  Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.  How many tragic stories can you name of people that acquired fame and yet fell apart in their  personal lives.  Being accepted and even lauded does not make us a complete person, in many ways it even hinders us.

The problem with our worldly system is the emphasis is on us.  We believe, falsely, that what matters most is ourselves.  Not true.  What matters most is what effect our having lived, has on others.  In the wonderful book, The Purpose Driven Life, the first sentence says it all, “It’s not about me.”

A life without faith is lost, and a faith not attached to reality is lost as well.  I’m a Christian.  You may ask what does that mean?  Let me try to do explain that in the most succinct way possible;

There is a God, one God, the only God.  He made heaven and earth and everything in the heavens, and He made you.  He knows all that can be known and yet, he knows everything about you, and all the other billions of people on this earth.  He loves you beyond anything you could ever understand.  He wants you to be one of His children, but He has given you the free will to decide for yourself if that is your desire.  He watches over you even when you haven’t accepted Him as your Heavenly Father.  His patience to wait is beyond our understanding, but He is waiting, and all you have to do to be adopted into His family is ask Him to accept you.  The world is filled with sin, and sin is defined as falling short of God’s desire for our lives.  We are all sinners, for we all have fallen well short of His desires for us.  The price of sin is death, so God sent His only Son to die for us to pay the debt of our sins.  He then rose from the dead and now sits at the right hand of the Father.  His forgiveness is available to any one who will accept Him and accept that forgiveness.  When we become His child, then and only then, do we find the completeness that we have desired and sought, but have never been able to find.

That’s it in a nut shell.  You may be waiting for, or hoping for fame, please trust me, this is much better.  If you accept Him, you will get all you need to feel truly worthy, and after all, that is what we have desired from the beginning of time.

the pilgrim  ( a member of God’s family )

*Photo Note:  Great Smoky Mountains from Morton’s Overlook, Nikon F5 film camera, 80-200 f 2.8 lens, Fuji Velvia film.