I bought a book recently. Not one off a bidding site, or Craigslist or at a thrift store. I bought this book, with not a hint of a bend in the spine. I even had to order and then wait over a week for it to arrive. It doesn’t smell dusty or musty. It was brand new …
So, why?
I had come across an article about a new book, by Barbara Brown Taylor. In here book, she says,
“this is not the life I planned …
and the central revelation in it for me –
that the call to serve God is first and last
the call to be fully human”
And so, the next day, I ordered the book.
And as I read a chapter, a page, a paragraph, a line … I sigh and groan, for I am reminded that I am a mere human, and that is all God has called me to be.
To be fully human is to feel fully all of the joys and sorrows of our human existence. It is to taste the sweet as well as the sour. It is to sometimes gain, and sometimes lose. As Brown-Taylor says, “loss is how we come to surrender our lives” … our fully human lives.
Her words remind me of the words of Jesus (Matthew 10:39):
“Whoever finds their life will lose it,
and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
In the Expositor, Plato quotes a paradox from a lost book of Euripides:
“Who knows if life be not death, and death life ?”
We live, each day, knowing that the reality of being fully human means that we are frail, with Earthly bodies, with an end hear on Earth. To acknowledge our mortality is to begin to live with purpose, to live his purpose for our lives.
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised.”
Job 1:21
itsawonderfilledlife 