Life is…

“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Prov. 16:25).

I woke up this morning with the answer to life’s deepest quest… “What is life?”

One day when I was just starting out in life the aging father of my sister-in-law was visiting from New York City. She came by our house to introduce him to her parents-in-law, my folks. I was sitting in the yard reading my Bible on that long ago Sabbath afternoon, pondering its deep thoughts when her retired college professor father came from behind me and asked me that deep, philosophical question, “What is life?”

I had never been asked that before, and it caught me off guard. That was such a different thought than I was entertaining at the moment, or had ever entertained. The Bible doesn’t go there, not really. It tells us what life is, rather than asking us to come up with our own formula. If I remember right, I gave the aging sage some deep, well thought out answer like, “I don’t know.”

But this morning, still in bed as I came to, I remembered my foolish acts over the years. I seem to be incurably stubborn in my foolishness, which makes some people impatient with me. Sometimes I’ve cried out to God, “Lord, please, no more! I’ve made too many mistakes. Just end my life! Kill me! Give the smarter world a nicer time without me because if I weren’t around they would have an easier go at life.” In my repentance I remember the verse, ‘Every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck.’ (Exo. 13:13). Lord, break my neck because obviously I’m not redeemed.” But He never kills me. I have to endure more stupidity, reproof, and humiliation.L 

So, arousing from sleep as I pondered my life of foolishness, I remembered God’s great cure-all for stupidity—the three-legged race. He takes His wayward and stubbornly resistant earthly children and puts them together in one world. He binds them in relationships of family and sibling, of friendship, of marriage, of offspring, of employment, of service to Him with others who are learning to trust Him, of neighborhood and community and society, etc. They must live and work together in confined spaces, a kitchen, a home, a dorm room, a jail cell, a workplace, a quarter acre or more with a fence running down the middle. And they all are forced to learn to get along.

By some common purpose or goal we are all tied together, like the picnic pastime of competing with two-person teams that are tied together at one knee. In that race each couple must learn quickly, in a crash course and with a steep learning curve, the pace and convention of the other person’s running style and speed. (It is a very illustrative game for married couples.) Both members of each team must copy each other. They must give and take. It’s a life and death struggle to surrender to the teammate for the benefit of both—or, lose the race.

At the shout, “Get ready. Set. Go!”, they are off and running. Or maybe it should be called off and stumbling, because they never get it right immediately. No team runs. That would be a miracle, and sinners don’t get miracles. By the end of the race some learn to comply with the other’s inability to conform; but many do not. Their performance is terrible; some teams don’t even finish the race. It’s too embarrassing. Just look at them tripping over each other, hitting the ground and laid out laughing, getting back up and trying again! Look at them making a fool of themselves! What a shame! Oh well, that’s life.

So, that is what life is—a three-legged race.

Deep. Hmmmm.

Isn’t our Lord Jesus profound and wise!