Jitterbugging for Jesus

Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.

— John Lennon

 

 

 

 

Her husband died, about a year before the long-awaited retirement, of a sudden, massive stroke. She stuck out her final year in the work place, however, and retired with new plans to travel on her own around the U.S. and also France and Spain and all the wonderful places in the world.

But within mere weeks of retirement she suffered the disabling effects of a rather rare kind of disease. She could still travel if she wanted to, she noted, but has determined that it wouldn’t be worth the hassle and anyway, she fears spending very much time away from her doctors.

I’ve heard this story many times. It comes with variations, but the essence of the story is always the same. Someone works like a mule, often working second jobs or enterprises on the side so that some day they can relax and enjoy life.

This sort of parallels with the previous posting at this blog about our conceits and deceits and our tendency to believe that if we live a certain lifestyle and believe in God and try to live by the Golden Rule our every dream will come true. And never mind that Jesus said the rain falls on the evil and the righteous alike.

Another way of saying that is, that the one thing you can count on in life, other than death, is that life ain’t fair. We all know it’s not fair, we all say that all the time, but we tend to believe it’s always going to be mostly fair to me. Or that it should be fair to me. It’s like Hell. Many people believe there’s a literal place called Hell where bad people will burn forever and ever and ever (what a loving God THAT would be), but no one thinks he or she is so bad that he or she going to be the one go to Hell and burn forever and ever and ever. That kind of Hell would make God a monster, but few people think they are so bad that they’d have to worry about such a Hell anyway.

Life really is unfair, and dreams really do die hard. The dreams of retirement. The dreams women have of a Prince Charming and men have of finding a woman who looks like Charlize Theron and cooks and cleans like Beaver Cleaver’s mom. The dreams of finally getting that plum job or promotion that will finally bring in enough coinage, as if we can ever make enough coinage to satisfy us and give us peace.

Few things sadden me more than stories I hear from people who have spent their entire lives fantasizing about the many and various things they thought would finally fulfill them and make them happy. They dreamed of how wonderful life would finally be when they reached retirement, or when they found the dream lover and spouse, or when they finally had eye-popping paychecks coming in.

Having quoted from a John Lennon song at the top of this posting, another song lyric comes to mind from Don Henley: “We’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales.”

If you’re not living for today–if you’re not living in the present moment, you’ve already died and gone to Hell. You may not realize it until your dream retirement “finally” arrives only to blow up, or until your dream lover turns out not to look eternally like Charlize Theron or not to be so pampering as she was in the courtship and honeymoon, or until you lose your magnificent job and the big paychecks aren’t there but the big mortgage payment on the McMansion is.

None of this is to suggest that we shouldn’t plan and dream our dreams and work toward fulfilling those, but dreams don’t come with lifetime warranties or money-back guarantees.

Breath deep, and thank God for the breathe God breathed into you at this moment, because God and life itself are in every breathe and every moment of the here and the now.