Life is such a weird thing. I live my day, and everything I do affects everyone around me. Everything they do affects me. My choices open or close future possibilities. I am responsible for my actions, but maybe I would react differently if certain things had or had not happened. And everyone else is responsible for their actions, but if I'd been kinder or more patient or had simply paid attention, maybe they would act differently.
I think in heaven we will get to see the string of our life, and how it gets tangled up in others, or how tangling it might have helped someone else. I think we'll see all the different possible endings. Actually, I don't think these things will happen; I just hope so. I want to look at my life and say, "Yeah, I could have done that or should have said this, but overall, I did okay."
Sometimes I wonder how important my relationship with God is. It's been a week since I worked on memorizing Scripture. I've prayed here and read random Scripture there, but nothing intentional or devoted. It doesn't seem like a big deal, until I wonder, what if talking to God last night would have caused me to say something to this person, who would have been encouraged to do this, which winds up affecting someone I don't even know? Or what if I learned the next section of James, and it applied to my day, and I had the right attitude instead of the wrong one?
I wonder how many bad things I could avoid, or how many good things I could find, if only I maintained a consistent and continuous relationship with the God who teaches me how to be good.
Mumford and Sons is my favorite group, because their lyrics tend to fly out of the stereo and get stuck in my soul. One of the first to smack me upside the head was this: "If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy, I could have won."
I can seek after God when I am soaring with joy or am crippled with depression. But when I don't care, when I think it doesn't matter--that is when I miss out. And who knows how many other people miss out as a result?
Very true.
ReplyDeleteI wish you were alone with those feelings. Unfortunately, you have lots of us for company.
ReplyDeleteWhoa. I read this without reading the comments first and I just thought, "Me too." You just put into words my feelings. I constantly think of how I could have reacted to my children and their whining or complaining or obnoxious voices or fighting if I had just spent time in the Word and in prayer. What is the most discouraging to me is that it seems when I do spend that time, I find that my kids are even MORE of those things listed, and they add other things just to top it off. It should be encouraging because maybe Satan is trying to thwart what growth I'm trying to gain, but it's frustrating because that means that maybe Satan is using my kids to thwart God's efforts. I think this may need to be a blog post of my own.
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