Worth Living

I just read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. It’s a classic my son, David, handed me after he’d read it over Christmas.

“Mom, this is right up your alley. Read it.”

So I did.

And David was right. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, was a man who understood the theory of humanity’s psychology from a knowledge standpoint, and the experience of humanity - its beauty and strength, and extreme degradation - as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps.

Here’s one nugget:

“…often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless.” (Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, page 72).

How many people do you know who figuratively close their eyes and live in the past? ‘Because the past is so much better than any possibility for my future,’ they think.

I get an eerie chill at the words: “Life for such people became meaningless.”

I pray this is not you! But just in case, here are three things to take into your head and heart today:

1. Take your life seriously. Your life is a gift. It’s valuable, rare and precious.

2. Know there’s meaning in your suffering. These are not trifling times.
They are full of meaning and purpose and opportunity. Don’t waste them.

3. Look forward. Set a date/time to do something special to look forward to.

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” 1 Peter 5:10

You have a life worth living!

Nancy

I’m real because God is so real.

CALLING

If you’re struggling right now to just make it, to push through, every day hold open your hands, palms up to God, and pray again and again: “Give me this day, my Daily Bread. God give me what I need to live this life, this day, in you.”