no fooling

I started the most challenging job of my life on April 1. It wasn’t the best job of my life. In fact, it taught me much about areas of weakness in my life. I haven’t resolved all of those areas, but I am, on average, less driven by career, more aware of the need for followthrough, more aware of my inability to make institutions change by sheer force of will or by weaseling. So maybe, like “take this medicine, it’s good for you”, it was one of the best jobs for my life.

I think that I may be in for another of those learning processes, though this time I’m doing it on purpose.

I’m going to try to live April as if I only have one month to live.

I haven’t received any bad news, any diagnosis, any warnings. My job isn’t on the line, my family isn’t sick, I have received no warning dreams or visions. I am not worried about turning fifty this summer. Our kids aren’t moving out any time soon. I haven’t heard about any comets or other cataclysmic events. I am not aware of any biblical prophesy that will be fulfilled by destruction of me or of my family or of our country or of the universe on April 30.

And yet.

What if, just for a month, I lived on purpose?

I’m reading 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed, a book where Scot McKnight reflects on the words that Jesus would have spoken morning and night, as emended BY Jesus (“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself”). That statement can become a purpose statement. Yes, it is the summary of the commandments, but what if rather than doing it because we have to (“Okay, I’ll love my neighbor, but this better be worth it” “Who exactly counts as my neighbor … and who can I ignore”) we decided that it was a way to live?

So what if I decided to live for a month as my last, choosing to live the way Jesus lived his last month?
We’ll see.

(the Jesus Creed on the Jesus Creed blog is here)

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