I can hear LIFE calling your name...

I can't say that I enjoy attention funerals. The mere sight of seeing people cry and bereft by loss makes it impossible for me to be unmoved. An even greater challenge is being forced to lay eyes on a corpse laying motionless, cold and who does not look anything like they did when alive.

Sadly, the vivid image of a lifeless being is often the one thing we try to blot out of our memories. It is not the thing we wish to talk about endlessly with our friends over dinner or amidst jovial laughter. Now can you imagine a person who is alive, yet who is so unfocused and who's life resembles that of a course? We know many of them and sometimes they are us. The point in ones life where life beckons you to get onto its wings daily, but you are so used to, accustomed to, content with, could not be bothered with, have simply accepted a life of the mundane that they might as well just cover you with soil because you are already dressed in your garment of ashes.

We love blaming things, people, even the guy with the pitch fork, simply because we will not accept that we have lost our focus. We have lost our zest for life. We are not what we ought to be, but we are qualified enough to judge the shortcomings of others. We are obsessed with things that mean nothing, but the things that really matters... those things that is the difference between life and death, to us it matters not. We move further and further away from what we have been designed for, painstakingly had someone lose His life for, but we make no effort to chase after that which we we actually born for.

Life will wait on us, it will do everything it can to entice us. Yet, there will come a day when our habits will become lifestyle and we will be too far gone down the road in order to make a U-turn. Life was not designed for us to follow the masses, to bicker and moan about what we do not have, but it was designed for us to truly live. I can hear the ocean begging us to visit it's shore, a book abandoned on the twenty-seventh page crying to be read in its entirety, a trip made together with a loved one stares daily at us through the pages of a glossy magazine, a child frustrated and disappointed yearning for the affection of a parent who is always to preoccupied, a heart busy losing its luster just waiting to leap yet again if only it's owner would allow herself to love again.

I am not sure what is more sad, seeing a corpse laying in a coffin or a person supposed to be alive, but who has simply just given up on life. You say if life was simply that simple. Well, when last have you actually given it a try? You sound more like someone who does not know what life tastes like, yet act as if you are the head chef in Life's kitchen. The time has come for you to start living again...

A challenge to parents

Yesterday morning I had the privilege to dedicate two young children during service. I spoke on the topic briefly: “Bring them to Me”. While our roles as parents cannot be underestimated, especially as we guide our children along the pathway of life, we cannot forget that our roles are primarily to guide them in paths of righteousness.

My concern in recent months have been with the growing number of young adults who lack the ability to discern what the right choices are for their lives and to navigate their way through a mass of challenges. A growing concern is the fact that young people carry with them feelings of guilt, shame and insecurity which make them bad relationship partners and even worse, terrible spouses because they have not mastered the ability to manage their emotions effectively. If they don’t dominate their partners, they either cannot control their tongues nor can they show respect to others because they simply wish to have their way.

I have to ask myself what the reasons are for a generation who puts such a high value on material nothingness which is here today, but gone tomorrow. Why an individual would attach such a high value to a human being when it is God that should be at the centre of their being?  I have come to the conclusion, and this is merely my opinion, that parents ought to realize the mammoth task that we have in dealing with our own “stuff” if we are to produce children who are able to develop into mature well-rounded individuals. Parents should try less to be their children’s friends, but to be their parent first. Too often parents get this wrong. It ought to be the other way around. We cannot follow the silly popular culture and yet our children cannot be “real” in a world that has no problem in showing us what reality means. 

I admit that not everything can be laid at the door of parents as society as a whole should be seen as part and parcel of a person’s socialization. It is however the parent that needs to realize that once that child leaves your home in order to start a family, they are in fact the ones who have been tooled largely by what we teach them. Unless we connect the dots, the generation of parents to come will seem even more wayward than we are already.