How Then Shall We Live?
Backpacking with Amy in the Rocky Mountains (2005).
So, it has been 28 days since my Glioblastoma diagnosis. Our lives have been totally flipped upside down. Our emotions are on hyper drive. We have been away from our home in Columbia, MO for 2 weeks now. We have made all kinds of decisions we have never faced before and have experienced the dear love of God and the sweet love of friends in huge ways. I face a monster of cancer that kills everyone in its path. My treatment starts today, and who knows what the side effects are going to be. Our circumstances are very new.
The question now becomes “how ought we live?”. Honestly, what do we want our lives to look like? What kind of people do we want to be in this tumultuous chapter? My simple, bold answer is this: we want our lives to look no different now that I am terminal than when I was healthy.
For the last 10 years or so, instead of asking young people what they want to do when they grow up, I have been asking them “what kind of person do you want to be?”. I also ask it like this, “what do you want your life to be all about?”. These two parallel questions are the most important questions to figure out! Listen, if you figure out WHO you want to be, DOING will take care of itself.
Most people have no idea who they want to be. We little humans just go around chasing shiny things thinking they will make us happy. No, no, no, God has a beautiful purpose for our lives. He wants to shape us into the most beautiful people imaginable. He certainly does not envision little shallow religious people who have little heart. A surface level faith that is not embedded in the pain of life does not help us much. He envisions men and women who are so filled with Him that they shine so sweetly and show Him off to the world. This world filled with pain needs an authentic example of men and women in deep relationship with Him. Reflection is mandatory to make progress.
We have been loving our new tandem bicycle we bought last week!
One way I answer this question of identity is to say, “I want to have a heart for God and a heart for people!”. I have often said that when I die I want people to say, “oh how he loved God and oh how he loved me”. As Amy and I continue on this new journey, I am convinced that our lives ought not change. We want to be those kind of people; being about hospitality, listening, prayer, sharing God’s love, making disciples, and giving big! We intentionally want to love God as hard as we can and love people as hard as we can.
Of course we need to make special memories with our children in the immediate days ahead. But that was the case before the cancer. Of course I want to keep preaching about the good news of Jesus! Of course I want to offer hope to the hurting. We endeavor to do all this with an increased tenderness because we now know life is short and pain is present. Life is shorter than I thought. The book of James says that our lives are like a vapor. I wonder if I comprehend this a little better today than I did a month ago.
Next Steps
So today, what kind of life do you want to live? What kind of man or woman do you want to be? Let’s go sit with Him. Be still! Listen to His voice. Let’s get ourselves on the Potter’s wheel and allow Him to shape us. He has a beautiful plan! His plan is to shape us into His amazing people so He can use us to deliver Himself to a hurting world that awaits the messengers.
“We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works which He prepared in advance for us to do.”
For Amy and I, as we traverse these painful days of cancer and treatment, we want to be those kind of people. I do not want people to just think we are tough or that we are gifted. We have lived this simple way for a long time. God has changed us from the inside out the past 30 plus years. For us to continue on this path makes the most sense.
I preached a series at my church, The Rock, two years ago on this topic titled, How Then Shall We live. Check it out here.