Life is worth living, May 13 Daily Reflection

 

The book with the bookmark

LIFE IS WORTH LIVING

Life is worth living

Wherever you are,

Deep down in a dungeon

Or high on a star.

Life is worth living;

It all has a plan

When God knows you’re giving

The best that you can.

The saint and the sinner,

The great and the small,

We all are God’s children

And He loves us all.

So pray when you’re happy

And pray when you’re blue,

For life is worth living

When God lives with you.

-Nick Kenny

 

I found this poem on the back of a yellowed and aged bookmark in the book “Encountering Jesus ”by Anthony J. Gittins. It’s somewhat mysterious to me. I found this book in my house and I can’t remember anyone giving it to me or leaving it behind. I have asked several people about it and no one has claimed it. I am reading the book and it is quite intriguing. It takes every scriptural account of encounters with Christ throughout all of the Gospels and tries to explain them. It takes the culture, the writer and that time period into consideration and interprets the meaning of each encounter. I have learned so much from this book.

 

It’s all a mystery to me. But when I feel guided I follow God and that is why I am reading the book. Today, while reading the book over lunch I read the bookmark again and the last two lines really spoke to me. “For Life is worth living when God lives with you.”

 

How many people are so lost in this world and in their own lives? How many people seem to wander endlessly without meaning or purpose? How many people are making choices based on their “wants” and selfish feelings? How many people question whether life is worth living?

 

“For Life is worth living when God lives with you.” Maybe those people don’t know God. Maybe those people feel that God doesn’t live with them.

 

God lives within each of us from the atheists to the Monks. God has never left our side. He left a piece of his divinity in each of us, our souls. He is there. He is omnipresent. However, many people do not recognize God. They refuse His existence or presence in their lives and many for strong reasons; they have suffered abuse, neglect, pain, disease, hunger or cruelty. They cannot understand how these things can happen if there is a God. God gave us free will to do as we choose. Many abuse that freedom and hurt others, things happen in this life, horrible, terrible things that God does not stop. So He is resented hated, ignored, detested and denied. But God never leaves us, He never walks away. He is always waiting for us to come home. He will wait for the anger to subside, He tries to hold us when the pain is too much to handle, and He tries to carry us when we can no longer walk, He tries to feed us and He tries to comfort us all the days of our lives. Without our acceptance we will not feel His embrace, His love or His presence in our lives. When we are able to strip it all down, tear down the walls of anger, the feeling of neglect, the scars of the hate we have endured, when we can finally reach into the core of our very being we will recognize God’s presence. He does exist. He does love us. He aches when we are in pain. He embraces us in our sorrow.

 

“For life is worth living when God lives with you.” Life is always worth living. It was a gift from God and He lives with every single one of us. It is our challenge to find Him there.

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4 Comments

  1. Theresa Marks
  2. Charles Howell
  3. Jan Redle
  4. Shelley

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