Do you believe that life doesn’t end at your last breath?
I believe that eternity has been planted in the human heart, and I believe it was planted and stitched in our hearts by a higher being, a force of Love, who I believe is God.
This hunger for eternity and meaning speaks to the unrest that our soul feels when we don’t feel the present, the right now, the breathing, moving, and living in this life, are enough.
It hits harder when we clock into our 8 to 5 job that pays the bills, but that job may not be what you feel you were created to do.
It hits hard when a loved one passes, and our frailty as human-beings is reminded.
It hits hard when the bliss and euphoric feeling of a good time where’s off, and you are back to face the same scary and unpredictable reality.
It hits hard during sickness, financial hardships, and when our soul aches when we feel lonely.
There is this cry in our hearts where we feel like we were created for more than just taking space here on planet earth for several decades to just fade away and be forgotten.
As of late, I have been over-thinking, over-doing, over-spending, over-trying in my life, and it is over-exhausting to live this way, and I feel that it stems from a place where I desire to “over”-accomplish to try to feel and experience greater meaning.
According to Solomon, who had it all, these were his words: “But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless - like chasing the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:11).
I am realizing that doing anything and everything “over” the top only burns me out on both ends.
I realized that I needed to shift and choose “under” instead of “over”.
I desire to come “under” something greater, more sovereign, more in control, more aware of what is going on in my life and this world.
I came home this past Friday night completely and utterly exhausted. My husband and our family will be celebrating our grandpa’s life, Papa, who devoted his entire life with his wife, Grandma Cookie, to furthering the gospel, the good news that there is life after death through Christ.
I remember his last coherent moment with our family; we played worship music, prayed together, and he called me his writer, and he told me to never stop writing and that people had to read what I wrote for God’s honor and glory.
Somewhere along the way of processing Papa’s passing, life had become so busy with acclimating to my job as Vice Principal and just balancing the day to day duties like making dinner, staying on top of the cleanliness of my home, making sure laundry isn’t piling up, intentionally pouring into my marriage, and in all of this, I began to look “over” what really matters instead of coming “under” the lead and guidance of something that is far greater than me.
This season, I want to shift to come “under” and be swept away by God’s love, to be swept away with the comfort and security that is in His control, to take step of faith, a risk, to truly be and do what I know God is calling me to be and do.
I don’t know what you believe in about what happens after your last breath, but I believe that we were all made more than to just take up space on this earth for just a vapor of time.
Do you know the real driving reason of what determined how hard you worked today?
If you are pursuing and working hard on things as simply as an “end” to themselves, you will find yourself being encountered by this same still small voice in your heart that is left unsatisfied and aching for something more.
God, this gentle force of love, desires to sweep us off our feet, where meaning is breathed back into our lives, where it is no longer hard or painful to look at time fleeting because we know that even though that this life is a vapor, eternity is forever.
We were created for more than just yesterday, today, or even tomorrow.
“Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted.”