Making Life Count

The sermon this morning talked about the days of our lives and what we are doing with them. Are we doing things that really matter? The sermon even mentioned thinking about one's obituary. What will be said about us when we are gone? What is our lasting legacy to our children, our friends, our neighbors, our community, and our church? While the sermon rambled around the topic, it was still food for thought.

I'm trying to become a professional, photo selling nature photographer. I want to share the beauty and wealth of God's creation with people who may not get the opportunities I do to experience it first hand. Because I believe that we have a spiritual connection with nature, I would like my photos to encourage others to spend more time exploring and learning spiritual concepts from that creation. It would please me if my work influenced people to protect the world that God made for us.

I'm also nearing the end of "middle age" and I am beginning to enter the world of "senior citizen." I don't feel like a senior citizen, (I'm way too young . . . ) but the days go by fast. Some days are filled with accomplishment, others are marked by mundane, ordinary activities, others seem to slide by with no obvious accomplishment. My energy is finite. There are still more possibilities of good things to do than one person can do. I can do fewer of them than in the past. I must make choices. Which of all the many things that I could do in a given day are the most important?

My "Grace Notes" passages echo this theme.

"In order to carry out great enterprises, one must live as if one will never have to die." Marquis de Vauvenargues

"The people who inspire us the most are those who plant trees they will never see mature, and who live at full tilt every day, even on the day they die. "

"Dream big dreams . . . . Fill your days with ambitious goals."

"the Good Life is waiting for us - here and now!" B.F. Skinner

"All we will ever experience is the present moment as we live it. Each moment is a microcosm of our whole life, who we are."

Spending time with my inlaws in their "winter years" reinforces these concepts of staying busy, filling my days with ambitious goals, and working toward those goals. I often find it very easy to allow this "slowing down" process to bog me down. I don't move as fast as I once did. It is easy to say I'll go exercise . . . . tomorrow. But one of my goals matches the phrase above . . .I want to live my life at full tilt every day. I want to be the Energizer bunny who just keeps going and going and going.

My choices right now will shape the senior citizen I will become. So, I'm on the uphill battle to get back to regular exercise, to keep my spiritual life healthy with time spent in prayer and contemplation each day, and to set goals (both ambitious and realistic) that help make each day one that is lived deliberately. I have a scheduling book that I try to set goals and record what I've done and a journal to record the spiritual.

I hope and pray that God will guide those goals - so that what I am doing is pleasing to him and part of his plan for me.