Stop and smell the roses – we’ve all heard it, we’ve all said it, we know that it means one should slow down and enjoy life but yet the calendar pages flutter by and at every turn of the technology scorecard life becomes faster paced. We spend time getting from place to place faster and faster. We study new ways of doing the same old things in more efficient ways. From travel to fixing a sandwich to making a move across country we are striving to figure out ways to get to the next stop in life a little quicker. But then, at the next stop in life, we jump back on the treadmill and race away. Today we no longer wait in line to buy tickets to movies we can see them streamed in our homes via the internet in just a few short months after initial release. Books come in digital format to be read in hand held devices.
Life happens while we are racing from one place to another and we are likely missing a whole lot of it.
I admire a young family I know for their willingness to make the journey more important than the destination. On a recent cross country vacation they opted to drive rather than fly so they could stop at numerous places of interest and explore a number of states in this vast country not just fly them in a rush to get where they were going.
Life is a journey. It is about the here and now. It is about who we encounter and help along the way and who we welcome in to our homes. It is about feeding the hungry and quenching the thirst of the parched, whether it is the literal food and drink or the metaphorical that they seek. We must be smart and plan for the as it will not take care of itself but we do not need to live for the future we need to live for today.
That includes our spiritual lives.
We have to stop along the way, enjoy the reflections of others, the important milestones that have been achieved, the special landmarks. To fly right over all the hard work that so many people have put into the study of religions is to skip haphazardly across the sky of the spiritual realm never touching the earthy truth of the sacred myth.
Christianity has become too much about the hereafter . . . it should not be about ‘the then’ . . . it should be about ‘the now’, emulating Jesus’ behavior is to be reflecting the sacred essence of life that is found in beauty and compassion, love and caring, and in appreciating all that we are part of, now. That is what Jesus actually did and taught. ‘Immanuel’ or “god with us” is synonymous with compassion with us, or justice with us, or humility with us. It is “with” and it is now.
I would encourage everyone to not worry at all about the afterlife. I don’t know what happens to us when we die. But at funerals and memorial services I have stopped promising people that they will one day connect once again with the deceased. Your loved one is with you now. Through life you became part of each other and now in death your lives are enriched by those whose lives have touched yours. Take it slow, enjoy the journey. The Sacred Spirit of All That We Worship be with you, now and always.
Blessings friends!
