Three friends went to see a deceased fourth friend at the funeral home.
While standing at his casket, they talked about what they’d want people to say about them in the same circumstance.
One man said he’d like them to say he was a great husband and father.
The second man said he’d like them to say he was a smart and successful businessman.
The third man wanted someone to say, “Hey, look! I think he’s still breathing!”
Life is, according to the dictionary, “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.”
The medical definition of life is “the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional plant or animal from a dead body or a state of living characterized by a capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.”
In country boy language, “Life is not being dead!”
The Bible defines life in Luke.
“Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”
— Luke 2: 52
I think it means life is growing into the person God created you to become. You’ll remember that God’s name is Yahweh, meaning “I AM WHO I AM.”
Translating that into our lives means life is growing into who you were created to become, and you’re able to say, “I am who I am.”
That would mean that sin is growing into someone you are not, and Paul describes that in Romans.
“ ... I do not understand what I do; for I don't do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate … I don't do the good I want to do; instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do. If I do what I don't want to do, this means that I am no longer the one who does it; instead, it is the sin that lives in me.”
— Romans 7: 15, 19-20 We struggle all our lives with “being who we are” i.e. being who God created us to become instead of “being who we are not” i.e. being something other than we were created to become.
But we can say, “Thanks be to God ... through our Lord Jesus Christ!” We can leave “who we are not” behind and move forward as “who we were created to become!”
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. With wife, Mary Ella, they are missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
