quote

"If life is a story, how then shall we live?
It isn’t complicated (just hard).

Take up your life and follow Him. Face trouble. Pursue it. Climb it. Smile at its roar like a tree planted by cool water even when your branches groan, when your golden leaves are stripped and the frost bites deep, even when your grip on this earth is torn loose and you fall among mourning saplings.


Shall we die for ourselves or die for others?
For most of us, the question is rarely posed in our final mortal moment (although there is glory when it is.)  Death is the finish line of the preliminary race. Shall we cross the finish line for ourselves or others?  The choice isn’t waiting for us down the track. The choice is now.


Death is now. The choice is here.


Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can.  You have bones, make them strain--they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter.  With an average life expectancy of 78.2 years in the US (subtracting eight hours a day for sleep), i have around 250,000 conscious hours remaining to me in which I could be smiling or scowling, rejoicing in my life, in this race, in this story, or moaning and complaining about my troubles. I can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breath to my wife and my children and my neighbors, or I can grasp after the vapor and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live. And, like Adam, I will still die in the end.


Living is the same thing as dying. Living well is the same thing as dying for others."

---
"How much of the vineyard can we burn first? How fast can we run? How deeply can we laugh? Can we ever give more than we receive? How much gratitude can we show? How many of the least of these can we touch along the way? How many seeds will we get into the ground before we ourselves are planted?"

N. D. Wilson, Death By Living

I just read this book for the third time and it won't be the last. If you need help directing your eyes and your love up to our gracious giver God and outward to those He sends you, read this book.

Read my full review here.