In 2023, Take Back Your (Precious) Life
What did you do on the first day of the new year? I went to church. And I cried. (A lot.) I heard a rescue story a doctor shared between songs:
On the night of Christmas Eve, a woman who lives in the Kodiak bush had a medical emergency. It was howling that night: wind, rain, high seas. No one was out. When we were sitting by candelight cheerfully sharing our Christmas eve dinner, some Coast Guardsmen got up from their celebrations, left their families, climbed into a helicopter and went out into the night, into the storm to get her. They saved her life.
Maybe I cried that morning because my heart was being prepared for another rescue story. It happened just a couple of hours after church. A woman called me. She had been looking for God for a long time. She wasn’t sure where to find him. I got to show her. On that phone call, years of abandonment and despair were washed away. She emerged cleansed, full of new life.
I think I cried because I don’t want to waste my life, not any part of it. But I have this last year. Because of these rescues, I know what I need to change. I know the ways I need to take back my life. Maybe you do too? Shall we do this together?
**Take back your life and your time not from dreams—-for without dreams we die—-but from distractions, from useless hours on Youtube, Twitter, Tik-Tok, from passive voyeurism into others’ lives, as if you too have not been given a remarkable life. Shut down the phone. Give your own miraculous life the rapt attention it deserves.
**Take back your life from doubts, from fears, from all the ways the enemy of your soul paralyzes you with what feels like unending limitations and immeasurable unworthiness. We are all limited and we are all unworthy and so we shall we ever be but those are still the only kind of people God wants and uses. (Say yes and go.)
**Take back your life from the Blackhole of Bad News. Every trend and tragedy from every acre on earth will never cease pouring through your screens, deluging and deluding you into apathy and despair. Don’t despair. Immerse in the great good news of the gospel again. Every day. Be who you are made to be and who the world needs most: the glad messenger of great good news. (Death is done. The kingdom of God is here!)
**Take back your life from the shooters, the ones who love to shoot down your moon just as it begins to rise. Yes, love your neighbors, be at peace with all people; be kind and walk in love but if God is the one lifting, don’t let anyone darken your dazzle. Rise and be radiant, dear one.
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
How much time do we have left to do this? John Keats, the brilliant British poet who was born 230 years ago, lived only to 25 before he died of tuberculosis. Listen to these words from Mary Oliver:
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.————-Mary Oliver
Let this post, this moment be a prod, a knife:
This year, take back your one (precious) life from all that thieves it.
Then give it away.
(Amen)