“Seek good, not evil, that you may live.” – Amos 5:14
During a recent routine checkup my long-time physician after glancing at my chart looked up and jokingly remarked that I had reached the exact age of average life expectancy for men in America. (Oh, gee, thanks Doc, just what I wanted to be reminded of!) I suppose that means in just a few short months, on my next birthday – assuming I make it – I will have beaten the odds. (Whoopee!) Simultaneously, I find myself wrestling with my emotions over the fact that our two oldest granddaughters who are entering their senior years of high school, will in just a few short months, this coming spring, be graduating, that great right-of-passage into adulthood.
Seems we are sort of bookends on the timeline of life, my granddaughters and me. And if that sounds a bit melancholy on my part nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, I miss that they will not be little girls anymore, but they’ve long outgrown that anyway. Neither is aging of particular concern to me as I have found this in many ways to be the most fulfilling season of life so far. Yes, in my case some of that can be attributed to good fortune – reasonably good health, financial comfort, a long happy marriage, and the fine family we have blessed with, including our five beautiful granddaughters. But true fulfillment has little to do with good fortune, I have learned, otherwise why do so many who have attained good fortune, much greater than mine, seem unfulfilled, while others who have suffered misfortunes of all sorts seem extraordinarily fulfilled?
It is the secret to life, it seems to me, that God is trying to get across to us throughout the scriptures. “Seek good, not evil,” wrote the prophet Amos, “that you may live.” I don’t think the Prophet was warning about Santa Claus coming to town, that if we are good little girls and boys we get presents, but if we are bad we are apt to get zapped. I think what he really means is by seeking out the good we will discover a truly fulfilling life, something Jesus was crystal clear about when He said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” And I don’t think he meant life filled with good fortune as we think of it from a worldly perspective, rather a life filled with an indescribable joy.
If I can somehow convey that one lesson to my grandchildren as I live out my days, then my life will have been lived to the “full”, that one day – someday – so may theirs be.