reflections on Luke 2:40-52

can't tie my shoe if my life depended on it.

tnight, we went oer the sermon that was this sunday about Jesus and his full life, starting with a scene from his early life. it made a lot of us think and redefine our definitions of full life, old life and how to live our lives.

in our lives at least in the middling ages on, we grasp a plan of our life, starting with work, family, perhaps marriage and kids, retirement, leading to a relaxing decline to death. we put our best efforts to put our lives accordingly into this plan, by agonizing about our 401k, boosting our physical well-being, saving for our future and children. everyday, we look forward to the "new tomorrow" when in reality, we are struggling to reach a number, an endpoint, a destination.

even to retirement, our mindsets turn into, "let's spend time with our kids, travel the world, see things". even so, our lives are not fulfilled or finished; the world keeps growing and offering more and more. when we become closer to death, we think and compare our days and times to points of the past, to people we know whom perhaps have accomplished more at an earlier time, or did things that we haven't done yet, but intrigue us.

if we see our lives as simply a laundry list, a quota to be reached, then we will not see the end of it. there is, frankly, too much for this world to offer-we will not be able to keep up with the ever changing, this force of society. it is perhaps in this way of thinking that we grow in allegiance to this world, become more tied and wanting of it, to experience more and more and grasp as much as we can before we inevitably go.

we step back to the portrait of Christ and his life as a testimony, to which one person in our small group insightfully said that it was a ministry of giving, growing richer and deeper, as relationships and wisdom flourished, and that in this respect, he lived a full life. this is in contradict to our typical path of life, in which we want to take and take so much, ever wanting.

from this i'd want to take away a lesson and say that life should be ever flexible, that giving ourselves to another should be the prime purpose of our lives. straying away from physical milestones, to not put our lives in terms of a number, to not mechanize and compartmentalize our lives.