Learning...Without Even Trying

WARNING: This blog post will contain a whole lot (and yes I mean a WHOLE lot) of random thoughts, mixed and jumbled together. Prepare yourself.
 
I've been feeling a bit uninspired lately...probably what people call "writer's block". Only problem is, I'm  not a writer, so I'm not sure why I haven't been thinking of things to write about!

  Well anyway, I went on vacation last week to Florida. It was a beautiful vacation! The ocean was sky blue, the sand incredibly white. The whole scene just reminded me of what a great God I serve and how vast His creation really is! Several times I would pick up a handful of sand and sift through it thinking, "Wow. God knows how may individual little grains of sand are in the entire world, whereas it would probably be impossible for me to count one tablespoon full."

  Something I really enjoy to do while I'm on vacation is to sit out at the beach or the pool reading books. The book that I was reading this week was about a dog who his owner described as "The World's Worst Dog". The book was hilarious. The dog truly was terrible. The whole book long he would destroy something, and the owner would have to go behind him and clean everything up and replace what he messed up.

  As I was reading I kept thinking about how much I am like that dog as a Christian. I go and mess things up, and frustrate God, yet He still loves me and He's willing to clean up after me. He'll never "get rid of" me when I mess up countless times.

  Towards the end of the book, the dog starts to die. John (the owner) sums up the shortness of life and how we need to cherish it in a way I thought was pretty great. In this part of the book, he's sitting in his car on the anniversary of September 11, thinking through some things.

   "In the lonely blackness, I could almost taste the finiteness of life, precarious, uncertain, able to cease at any instant without notice. I was reminded of what should be obvious but too often was not, that each day, each hour and minute, is worth cherishing. 
  I felt something else as well--an amazement at the boundless capacity of the human heart, at once big enough to absorb a tragedy of this magnitude (9/11) yet still find room for the little moments of personal pain and heartache that are part of an life. In my case, one of those little moments was my failing dog. With a tinge of shame, I realize that even amid the colossus of human heartbreak that was Flight 93, I could still feel the sharp pang of the loss I knew was coming."
 
  This book was not written by a Christian, but he sums that up perfectly. Whenever I hear of things that I need to do (i.e. witnessing, doing things for God) I think, "oh I'll do it when I get older! I still have so much ahead of me!", when in reality, I could die instantly just because God wanted me to. As my pastor put it, "God doesn't just give you life when you're a baby and that's it. No, every breath you take, God just gave you life. He can take away that life just as fast as He gave it to you also."

  I don't want this blog post to sound like doomsday and all depressing, but I want it just to get you thinking. What have I missed in life so far that I could have done for Christ? What can I do with the life that God so graciously gives me every day? How can I live each day, hour, minute, and second to the fullest?

  So as you can see, I've been thinking a whole lot about life lately, and what I live for, and what my priorities are. It's amazing how much I've learned from my own dog about loving the simple things and living each day with energy, ready to find out what each and every day will bring. Live your life for God, and you'll have the most accomplished life you can have!