Life is Brief, so Find the Beauty

Last updated on: June 3, 2016 at 11:39 am by Kyle Roberts

Life is Brief, so Find the Beauty 2016-06-03T11:39:25-05:00 Kyle Roberts

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I’m struck by the brevity of life today, as I wriggle today between two life-bookends.

CC0 Public Domain, via Pixabay

Today is my daughter’s last day of kindergarten. Her life is stretched out in front of her like big, open canvass. And yet, it’s already slipping by too fast.

Yesterday I told her that, starting Saturday, she’d be a first-grader! She corrected me: “No, Dad,” she said. She has a whole summer to be “in-between” kindergarten and first-grade.

In other words, don’t rush it, Dad.

She’s wiser than she knows.

Tonight I fly south for the memorial service of a wise and kind uncle. He lived a full life and made a big impact. But still, he died way too young.

Through most of life, I do my work and focus on family and friends. I read and write academic theology; I teach my classes. I get anxious about finances and the responsibilities of home ownership; I occasionally get riled up about injustices–big or small–though mostly my frustrations are directed at when things don’t go perfectly in my own little world.

As I roll on unthinkingly through life, I can forget about life’s brevity. I may take little or no stock of the value of each moment, of each event. I can get frustrated with myself; angry at “the world out there,” and can sometimes treat others around me as basically animated furniture.

I try to control the uncontrollable, to tightly manage my “self,” and in doing so, can cut off the flow of life. A flow that otherwise would reach out to others.

And yes, I can sometimes hate, rather than love.

But this life is too brief to restrict that flow; too valuable to fortify ourselves against its beauty, even when that beauty might terrify us at first?

If we were all a little bit better at keeping perspective, I wonder if we’d also be better at loving each other? Better at finding the beauty in each other? And better at creating it, too?

As I sit here, struggling to write some modest academic theology, none of which is going to change the world, I gladly confront that question for myself, and accept this injection of perspective.

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