I was clickety-clacketing away at my keyboard at work today when a co-worker mused, “It’s already the 20th.  Can you believe February is almost gone?”  Yeah, uhh- well, no, I can’t.  The year just started.  It was just yesterday that the old calendar was tossed and the new one was hung.  Well, it was like yesterday.  And high on my list of priorities for the new year was to make a list of goals, and to chase them.

I still haven’t even really made the list.

One thing that I pledged to do, though, was to read through the Bible this year, taking in a few chapters a day.  I’ve fallen behind a time or two, but I am still on course with the schedule, and it has been good to revisit the patriarchs, and the life of Moses, and the birth of Israel- to re-read about  people of God and the people of God written about in the Scriptures.

As the year has gotten off to a quick start, with a sixth of it almost done, I am also reminded that it was not long ago I was thirty year-old looking at the future, wondering about where I would make a mark in life, and with who I would make a family.  Shortly before that, I was in my early twenties, asking the same questions, except with more zeal and (a bit more) ambition.

I am reminded that life doesn’t usually turn out like we planned it- if we planned it at all- but that fact is okay.  That is part of what makes life good.  The detours, the lapses, the deviations from the anticipated course are all full of possibilities, if we allow ourselves to greet them.  I am one of those who could have planned his life better- and who could have made better use of a number of the backroads I have traveled- but, in general, I have been pretty fortunate in what I’ve experienced thus far.  Undoubtedly there are lessons I wish I had learned 20 years ago which would in some ways make my life better today.  But yesterday is gone.  I am trying to learn to accept better those things that I cannot change, and to think more clearly about the things that I should. I am grateful to still be here, and to have a lot of the basics in life.  Still, at core, I know that the biggest effort I need to make in my life is to continue to learn how to love.  Love takes strength; love takes courage; love demands risk-taking and the acceptance of consequences, and in a world like ours today, the love you give has a good chance of being overlooked.  Still, it is in the loving that we ourselves grow and change, and harden into the person who we should and could be.

I follow some smart people online through social media.  I follow some smart people who think richly and clearly about world problems and solutions, and for the most part, they are fascinating and inspiring, dazzling even in their knowledge of regional conflicts, best business practices, economic analysis, and personal development disciplines.  A few of them think like me, and a number of them don’t- and that’s fine with me.  A handful of them, though, disparage people like me because we read the Bible, and prefer Scriptural wisdom and direction over popular platitudes and trendy politics, and, may it not be so- we think God exists and has bearing on who a person is supposed to be, and how they are to live their lives.

It’s easy to understand why someone might think I am simplistic because I follow a book that features a god who says He is “The God”, and whose history traverses 4000 years or so, and whose penultimate protagonist is none other than the God’s son, who, in full control, bleeds his life away so that through his death, others might find life.  There are some stories and images in the book that are big concepts, much bigger than I can fully comprehend.

What I wish I could help those smart people to see is that, in spite of the incredulousness of some of the stories, they are grounded in a sanity which can only be seen through eyes of faith, and fully comprehended from a position of love- because the book is all about love.  It is about why we love, and how we love, and how we can’t love, and despite that last fact, how, in Him, we are yet so loved and learn how to love all over again.

Just as the first few months of this year have blown by reminding me that the year will be over sooner than I know it,  I am also reminded that life is short, and when you realize you only have so much time, you want to fill that time with what matters.  And you want to stand your ground on things that matter to you, that matter related to living and being a human being.

To some smart people, the Bible is a source book of simplicity and a reason for ridicule, in large part because some of its adherents know it well enough to misapply it and use parts of it to browbeat others while completely missing its message.

If the purpose of a human life is simply to become a master of understanding everything, I can understand the criticisms of the cynics and the skeptics of that book. It leaves the mind scrambling sometimes. But if the purpose of a human life is to learn how to love, which I think it is, then the Bible, this love letter from God, works on the human heart like nothing else I know.  Call me a dolt, but I’ll accept your intellectual assault on some of its content- and I pretty much contend that your critiques have (or will have) acceptable explanations.  But  I will also suggest to you, if you are interested in things of the heart, in matters relating to the spirit, soul, and survival- if you have an interest in what it means to live well and love deeply- you need to spend time in this book. Those things which give a life meaning and joy come from the heart.

Life is short.  These are gifts, these purposes which we choose to live our lives for, and these principles which we choose to base our lives on.

I may struggle to get that goal list together this year, but a long way into life’s journey, I still know that a large part of what I need to really keep me going day by day cannot be manufactured by my mind or my will.

To guide and guard and grow my heart, I am constantly reminded that I need God’s Word in me-  and I always will.

And the farther down the road I get, the more I recognize this truth in my life.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”
~Psalm 119:105