Tips for Life
by Alan Bailey
Peoples’ lives are often violently interrupted. News has gone around the world in recent days of earthquakes and a tsunami which have caused many deaths and huge devastation. We almost get used to hearing such reports.
In certain places, calamities are bound to happen. Cities are built on fault lines. Large populations live on low ground subject to flooding. Tornadoes often occur in a known strip across a country. To live there is like sitting on a time bomb. Sooner or later it will explode. Yet, life goes on in these places, daily cares being the focal point. The people are largely unconscious of potential dangers.
We are all a bit like this
Our time is taken up with work, eating, sleeping, playing or watching sport, travelling to and from, talking with friends and neighbours and getting what enjoyment we can out of life. One hundred per cent of our lives could be described this way. “Well. what else is there?” someone may ask. Life is summed up as a struggle for survival, a struggle to find happiness. Most of us wouldn’t have time for anything else — if there was anything else.
We choose the lesser, not the greater
We are content to live with what we can cope with for the moment. Anything else will have to wait. The obvious is supreme. But we may be asleep on a time bomb.
Think of it this way. If we could see ourselves from a million miles out in space, we would see a tiny planet spinning away on its axis and hurtling around the sun in a huge orbit at a fantastic speed. The planet is a thin crust wrapped around incalculable heat. Any number of insecurities exist which could blot out life in an instant.
Surely we must ask questions of ourselves or of somebody. Who put all this amazing arrangement together? For what purpose? Are we going to be held accountable for our lives? Is our conscience telling us something important about what kind of people we are?
Are we breaking laws of some kind? What is the meaning of it all?
We often quit just here
The present pressing problems are enough for most people to try to handle. Big questions are a big bother. Who knows anyway?
We are told in the Bible that: Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made. So those people have no excuse at all! Which means that we do wrong when we leave God out of our lives and our thinking.
He has made many things plain to us in the Bible and through the visit the Son of God made to this planet. The news is good, though the truths are all weighty and important. Since God is who he is, and since he loves us and is calling us back to himself, how dare we act as if there is nothing to think about and nothing to do in our relationship with him?
The Bible shows that we are all going out into eternity. Huge regret is inevitable if we neglect the important. There will be never-ending ages in which we are going to be glad that we got to know God or sorry that we didn’t. Yes, it’s heavy stuff. But it won’t be made one gram lighter because we ignore it or make a joke of it. Give God a hearing.