You Only Live Once.
The inspiration for anything from skydiving to
one-night-stands, “YOLO” has become one of the favorite hashtag-maxims of this
generation. It makes sense. Too many of us spend life standing on the
sidelines, watching others seize opportunities we ourselves are too afraid to
chance, allowing the parade of days and years to float past us. We need something
to get us in the game, an energy drink for the soul, a kick in the inner
constitution. We need a 4-letter reminder that we only get one shot at this
crazy existence and that we had better start giving it all we’ve got.
“You are never going to see these people again,” says the
blind cosmos. “So who cares what they think?”
My family recently went on vacation to Disney World, where
we took an African safari in the Animal Kingdom. The safari jaunt whet my
appetite for trans-global adventure, one involving the unbounded wild and the
risk of real danger. I began to imagine what it would be like for Katie and I
to trek the jungles of Africa or the rain forests of South America. Within a
few minutes, I found myself chatting with an older couple who, to my
astonishment, casually mentioned that they had travelled on an African safari.
They said it was the best trip of their lives. “If you ever have the chance,
you should do it,” they told me.
“Yes,” she told him. Cassie Bernall was asked by her
Columbine murderer if she believed in God. Then he shot her.
Maybe it makes sense to spend tens of thousands of dollars
on a safari (even if you cannot afford it) if you are only going to live once. Maybe
it makes sense to buy that car or have that affair. But there are many other
endeavors that would never make sense to the YOLO philosophy. I wonder if
Mother Teresa would have spent all those years gnarling her body caring for
people who were just going to die anyway if she thought she was only going to
live once. A leper colony does not seem like a place you expect to find #YOLO graffiti in the alleys. Would Dr.
King have found those death threats more compelling if he thought he was going
to live only once? Would he have abandoned his letter-writing to scratch #YOLO on the Birmingham prison walls?
Would Cassie still have said “yes”?
If the thought of living only once is enough to incite a
desire for fleeting fun and self-fulfillment, what is it that would cause
someone to give up those things for
the good of others?
Peter said to Jesus, “We have left all to follow You!”
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left
home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the
kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the
age to come eternal life.”
Christians are empowered to live for the good of this
present world precisely because we believe we will live more than once. Jesus
could throw Himself headlong toward death on a cross, dark and torturous as it
was, because He knew that death could not keep Him. He would rise again, and
the first day of the week would become the first day of a new hope for anyone
who dared to follow. He promises us that He is only the first to rise, that He
has blazed a trail over the broken gates of death for us all. We will rise
because He is risen.
Here is our great consolation and hope. If this life is all
there is, then why not live for myself? Why not live like a toy store shopping
spree, grabbing all I can in exuberant desperation before the clock runs out?
But if there is a life to come, and if I will live that life in a body that is
made new, then I am free to live with the confident patience of a wise
investor. I am free to defer pleasures, saving them for the future so I can
share other’s burdens in the present. I am free to live simply and work
passionately and sacrifice completely. I am free to live my best life later.
What if you never reach your dreams because you have given
so much for the needs of others? What if carrying your cross and following
Jesus means you never get that job, or live in that house, or marry that
person, or visit that country? What if it means that you lose your very life? Jesus
says you will receive many times more than any of those things, and I do not
think He means only spiritual blessings. The promise of Jesus’ Resurrection is
a promise of a new body living on a new earth. There we will have friends to
love, exquisite meals to eat, mountains to climb, castles to build, and Jesus
to worship. There will be no sin, no sickness, no sorrow – none of the things that
haunt and hinder our dreams in this world. All will be made right, and all will
be ripe for our enjoyment.
This is not pie-in-the-sky or some sort of theme park for
which you can buy a ticket. This is the bright Sunday morning for those who
follow Jesus through the darkness of Good Friday. Have you given up on wealth
and possessions for the Kingdom’s sake? Here is your inheritance. Are you now single
and celibate for the Kingdom? You cannot imagine the intimacy that awaits you.
Are you weary and worn from caring for your sick, tending to your little ones? You
will hear, “Enter into My rest.”
Do not place your joy in only living once. That is but a dying
joy born of fear. “Do not be afraid,” said the angel at the tomb. Do not be
afraid of missed pleasures, small houses, sickness and death.
“He is not here, he has risen.” Here is the true joy of
living. Here is the courage to love the world rather than the short years of
this age, to sacrifice our dreams and our desires and our very lives, knowing
that they too will be raised and redeemed. Here is the strength to say “yes” –
to lay down beside the Lamb who was slain.
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me,
though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me
shall never die. Do you believe this?”
“If you ever have the chance to go on safari, you should do
it,” they told me.
My friends, I think I will. Go on ahead, blaze the trail
through the jungle. Leave for me a path and I will catch up with you soon.
For now, there is a cross to carry.
No comments:
Post a Comment