A devotional about what is most important.

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life!
To put to rest all that was not life,
And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
— Henry David Thoreau.

What does it really mean to live? I assume that each of you who are reading this is currently “alive,” but are you really “living”? When I look around me, both inside the church and out, I see so many people who are drifting through their earthly existence with no real “life” in them. As Tony Campolo so perceptively states, “They play it safe and tiptoe through life with no aspiration other than to arrive at death safely.”

Please don’t think that this is turning out to be a negative, depressing article. The desire of my heart is to somehow share with you that which God has been showing me, which can be summed up in the Latin phrase “carpe diem”–“seize the day.”

Image: Rula Sibai

Did you know that the person you were when you read this “word” has ceased to exist? As each second of your life passes, every molecule and atom and subatomic particle in your body changes position. Your blood moves around your body, while some of your cells die and some new ones come to life. In a physical sense, the person you were one second ago no longer exists and can never be brought back.

It is the same way with “life.” During our time here on earth, God presents us with only so many opportunities to “live,” and once that opportunity passes, it is gone forever. We cannot go back and retrieve it–God is the only one who can control the timeline.

The biggest-grossing movie of all time is “Titanic,” a three-hour extravaganza about the sinking of the (then) largest and most luxurious ship in the world, on April 14, 1912. Deemed “unsinkable,” the R.M.S. Titanic now sits in two pieces on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, having claimed the lives of over 1500 of the 2200 souls aboard her 90 years ago.

Besides the obvious tragedy of 1500 people losing their lives, one of the saddest parts of the story (to me) is the wasted opportunities. Think of all of the family and friends who never had the chance to say good-bye … all of the important things that were left unsaid or undone … all of the loved ones who never got to say “I love you” that one last time before their mother/father/husband/wife/brother/sister was swept away for all eternity … simply because those 1500 people didn’t know that the early morning hours of April 15, 1912 would bring an end to their earthly lives.

God has given to each of us a wonderful gift—life. In this life, we are presented with a multitude of opportunities, blessings, and challenges, which make each day and hour that we exist very special. God blesses us with friends and family, a mind with which to learn and a heart with which to care.

The truth is, we don’t know what the future has in store for us. It is now the year 2008, and I am now 38 years old, I may live another 60 years or another 60 minutes. The point is that we should live each day like it is our last. Make the most out of every moment, and do not waste the opportunities that God gives us: “And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith” (Galatians 6:9-10).

I’ve come to believe that this is the “abundant life” that Jesus talked about (John 10:10). God has blessed us all with talents and abilities; let’s use them to worship him and to bless others. Let’s not waste the life that we’ve been given here on this earth. “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25). Let’s not wait until we get to heaven before “living it up”; let’s start right now with the eternal life we already possess.

Find joy in the cry of a newborn … discover the creativity of our Creator in nature and in the world around us … give at least three sincere and edifying compliments a day … develop those gifts that you can see peeking through, and use them to God’s glory … live life as an exclamation, not an explanation.

When I come to the end of my earthly life, I don’t want to find that I never really lived. Let’s have a passion for everything we do. Let’s personally turn into reality the words of poet Walt Whitman, who, after despairing over all of the world’s problems and evils, and wondering what was the point in living, then came to the conclusion that the answer is simply “that you are here—that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” What does your verse say?

This guest article was originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website in May 2008.

McGrath’s Surprised by Meaning is a fairly accessible and slender volume that quickly immerses the reader into the ongoing conversation between radical atheism, science, and Christianity, centering on the latter’s ability to provide meaning to experience. As the title, an allusion to C.S. Lewis’ work, suggests, Surprised by Meaning falls into the tradition of intellectually robust and academically informed yet pietistic apologetics. It seeks to navigate and renegotiate this tradition through modern scientism and militant atheism. In the process, McGrath builds an irenic yet polemical argument that comes to crescendo in a more deeply appreciable presentation of the Gospel.

Alister McGrath, a North Irish theologian, is currently a faculty member of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. He is also an ordained Anglican priest. Prior to his work as a theologian and priest, McGrath pursued studies in biochemistry and molecular biology, earning a D. Phil in the latter. He has written a number of other books on the relationship between science and faith, the New Atheism, and historical theology. He has recently written a biography on C.S. Lewis (2013) and a book on Swiss theologian Emil Brunner. As a conservative and intellectually engaged Christian, McGrath’s work represents some of the best thought engaging influential currents in contemporary, Western society. However, for some American Evangelicals, McGrath would be considered somewhat liberal, as he endorses a type of theistic evolution and appropriates truth from literature and philosophy as well as the Scriptures.

Alister McGrath

Surprised moves slowly, especially through the first seven chapters. McGrath, accustomed to writing tomes, tends towards the same pace with this text. It is almost a quarter of the way through the book before he describes the thesis of the book by quoting Bernard Lonergan, “‘God is the unrestricted act of understanding, the eternal rapture glimpsed in every Archimedean cry of Eureka’” (29).

Several more pages later, the thesis is clearer:

The argument of this book is that Christianity offers an intellectual sun that illuminates an otherwise dark and enigmatic world: it gives a deeply satisfying “empirical fit” between theory and observation, which suggests that the map of reality that it offers is reliable and may be trusted (57).

Prior to this, McGrath traces his own turn from atheism to faith, the contours of the New Atheism and some of its fallacies, and the proper role, use, and definition of science. He writes: “[T]hings that are really worth believing in lie beyond proof. Our most important beliefs are the ones that simply cannot be proved” (19) and “Science is about warranted belief, not about rational belief. The history of science is about the recalibration of notions of ‘rationality’ in the light of what was actually discovered about the deeper structure of nature” (27). In more philosophical argot, McGrath seeks to provide the beginnings of a Christian epistemology. In another sense, the first half of the book feels more like a prolegomenon than the building of a sustained thesis. Nonetheless, many of the threads pulled out in the first seven chapters are interwoven in the final six.

The other half of Surprised seeks to display how the intellectual sun of Christianity illuminates the world. McGrath begins this endeavor by looking at cosmology. Although at times too dense for the non-specialist, his main point in this section unpacks the anthropic principle at a universal and biological level. In short, the universe is “fine tuned” for life (61, 66, 68). He then discusses the latest developments in regards to teleology and evolutionary theory. Here he argues that there seems to be purpose in the evolutionary process and this suggestively coheres with what could be called Providence.

Moving from developments in science and their illumination by the Christian sun, McGrath explores the meaning of history, culture and faith vis-à-vis an atheistic account. He charts his course by centering on the concepts of the image of God and the sinfulness of humanity (86). Keeping interpretations of history and humanity oscillating between these two poles provides a necessary realism, neither angel nor devil.

(Kingston, Jamaica) — A three-day consultation took place involving representatives from six different “believers baptism” church traditions to share their understandings and practices of baptism and to explore how their thinking has changed in light of the emerging theological convergence on baptism and growing ecumenical encounter over the past 30 years. This was the first time such a gathering has taken place, and thus represents an historic moment in the life of these traditions.

The traditions included the Baptists, Brethren, Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Mennonites, and Pentecostals. The 18 participants came from Jamaica, Kenya, Germany, Paraguay, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The initiative for the consultation grew out of the annual meeting of Secretaries of Christian World Communions in 2012, which noted fresh thinking and official agreements around the mutual recognition of baptism between churches who practice “infant baptism” and those who have practiced “believers baptism” have been observed.

The agenda of the consultation included presentations from each of the traditions on their past and current teaching and practice of baptism, with attention to how their understandings have changed or developed, along with the opportunity to discuss the presentations. A representative of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches was also present to provide input from the perspective of the wider global discussion on baptism within the ecumenical movement.

The highlights of the consultation, as stated in a report on the meeting, included:

• gratitude for the opportunity to have an open and honest reflection on the meaning, practice and shared understandings of baptism among the participants;
• naming the potential found in the image of “being on a journey” for the Christian life, with different forms and expressions of initiation and confession, while sharing a similar call to discipleship;
• the significance of understanding the Holy Spirit as a source both of our diversity as well as our unity in Christ;
• the need for a re-examination of the language of ‘sacrament’, ‘ordinance’, ‘sign’ and ‘symbol’ as ways to acknowledge that God is the primary actor in baptism;
• the need to recognize the continuity between ecumenical reception of other traditions as church, and the practices that marks each tradition as a unique expression of the body of Christ.

The full text of the report on the meeting will be shared with both the Conference of Secretaries of Christian World Communions and the Faith and Order Commission of the WCC with the hope that it will move the discussion and work on the mutual recognition of baptism and Christian unity forward.