Christian Living

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Larry Lilly’s Letter Friday March 31, 2006

I am one of those blessed or unfortunate people who live life with a sense of urgency. Blessed or fortunate depends on your view of why we are here. One group gives the advice to smell the roses along the way. I did that one day and by actual count I smelled 309 roses. I had an allergic reaction that took days to get under control at a cost of several hundred dollars. I think the medical profession came up with the rose smelling scheme.

That life must have balance is a given, but I think most people are unbalanced on the side of lazy bones. To live as though we must give account of things we have smelled at the end of the day we call life seems ludicrous to me. Will we walk around heaven recalling the smells of our garden, in heaven which is called paradise? Will we recall the smells of the city? The milking barn? Of death? Have you ever come upon a terrible accident and smelled death, as life oozed out of people lying ripped and torn along the highway?

Well so much for smelling roses.

I do not think that true living means running around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off, though I have seen improperly killed chickens do this.

I do think the scriptures teach that the life well lived will be lived by a person with a true understanding of the urgency of taking care of the important aspects of life.

James communicates this truth when he writes that our life is as a vapor that makes a brief appearance and then is gone. Not much to it is the idea. James made much of the mistake of putting too much emphasis on this very brief life. In comparison to eternity, the longest life lived on this earth is not even a nanosecond.

Hugging your child is urgent for they will soon be far enough along in their own journey through the vapor to not really care all that much about your hugs. They will remember the time you gave them when it mattered, but now they want their own space. When this day comes and as sure as the sun appears in the East each morning this day will come and it will have snuck up on you while you smelled the roses. To the four winds (another phrase was in mind) with the roses, hug the kids!

Years ago a child was working hard on homework. Her mother asked “Why don’t you stop for awhile?” The little girl replied, “I only have one candle, Mom, and it will soon be burned out. I want to do what I can while the candle burns.”

The candle of life will soon burn out. And then the questions will be concerning the urgent spiritual and lasting things of life, the people we could have and should have influenced for Christ and the higher things of life.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2006 Use with credit.

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