I’ve been thinking about what it means to be fully alive. This has led me to think on what it means to be living at all, let alone “fully alive.” I don’t want to use the term in some sensational kind of way, like jumping out of planes or climbing Everest. I want to mean it. Merely breathing in and out, having a few meals and a few laughs each day—is that being alive? Is it working hard, making money, or being driven to success? I’m not sure.
The reason for these ruminations is sort of an internal check. I feel alive here, experiencing so many new things, so many different things. I still walk down the street and wrinkle my nose at a particularly unpleasant smell (and there are many). I still balk as people whiz by on their motorbikes. And I still smile and wave at the little kids (and adults) on the way to work who shout “Hello!” to me. Does this add up to being alive? Is this the life I’ve been promised?
I guess to fully know life, you’d have to experience death, and well… that’s one thing I don’t know. So I’m clinging to promises, words from God that illustrate what I should be feeling. Things like “streams of living water” or “life to the full.” I believe these things, I do. But I don’t know what streams of living water look like, and life to the full is certainly not life at its busiest.
Today I’ve been thinking on this verse: He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11). It comes as part of a section filled with “timing.” A time to plant and uproot, time to embrace and refrain, time to search and to give up. I feel those verses—the timing in my life is all off now. It’s not jet lag anymore, it’s transition. This is a time for… what exactly? Something between weeping and laughing, not quite mourning and not yet dancing. So then we get to this verse that says that God makes everything beautiful in its time. He puts eternity in our hearts. I like how the Amplified Bible translates it: He also has planted eternity in men's hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
A sense of purpose, satisfied only by God. This has been “planted” in my heart. Is it possible that in the last few years, this purpose has truly taken root and is sprouting? Here in Cambodia, I feel this in a new way. Here I catch visions… of work that is possible, of ways this country can heal. I can see God working to make Himself known. I see need all around me, and this drives the purpose I feel. I have eternity set in my heart—I have a purpose, and what God will do here, with and through me, I can’t even fathom. This is exciting. This is hopeful. This is real. Maybe, just maybe, this is what life is. The purpose that drives us to something better, something different, away from the familiar and towards something we can’t understand.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not always “fully alive”— I’ve never jumped from a plane, and my sense of purpose occasionally wavers when I have to think about things like budget. Yet in the stirrings of my heart to care for this nation, to live for the Kingdom, and to draw closer to the Lord, I think I’m learning what it is to truly live.
The reason for these ruminations is sort of an internal check. I feel alive here, experiencing so many new things, so many different things. I still walk down the street and wrinkle my nose at a particularly unpleasant smell (and there are many). I still balk as people whiz by on their motorbikes. And I still smile and wave at the little kids (and adults) on the way to work who shout “Hello!” to me. Does this add up to being alive? Is this the life I’ve been promised?
I guess to fully know life, you’d have to experience death, and well… that’s one thing I don’t know. So I’m clinging to promises, words from God that illustrate what I should be feeling. Things like “streams of living water” or “life to the full.” I believe these things, I do. But I don’t know what streams of living water look like, and life to the full is certainly not life at its busiest.
Today I’ve been thinking on this verse: He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11). It comes as part of a section filled with “timing.” A time to plant and uproot, time to embrace and refrain, time to search and to give up. I feel those verses—the timing in my life is all off now. It’s not jet lag anymore, it’s transition. This is a time for… what exactly? Something between weeping and laughing, not quite mourning and not yet dancing. So then we get to this verse that says that God makes everything beautiful in its time. He puts eternity in our hearts. I like how the Amplified Bible translates it: He also has planted eternity in men's hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
A sense of purpose, satisfied only by God. This has been “planted” in my heart. Is it possible that in the last few years, this purpose has truly taken root and is sprouting? Here in Cambodia, I feel this in a new way. Here I catch visions… of work that is possible, of ways this country can heal. I can see God working to make Himself known. I see need all around me, and this drives the purpose I feel. I have eternity set in my heart—I have a purpose, and what God will do here, with and through me, I can’t even fathom. This is exciting. This is hopeful. This is real. Maybe, just maybe, this is what life is. The purpose that drives us to something better, something different, away from the familiar and towards something we can’t understand.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not always “fully alive”— I’ve never jumped from a plane, and my sense of purpose occasionally wavers when I have to think about things like budget. Yet in the stirrings of my heart to care for this nation, to live for the Kingdom, and to draw closer to the Lord, I think I’m learning what it is to truly live.
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