A Life Well Lived
A friend once asked me, “What is the reward for a life well lived?”
She was grieving. She had just lost a baby. She was questioning why she would be punished like that. She was asking why she would be asked to suffer so when she had done nothing to deserve it.
I didn’t know what to tell her. This is always a tough question, even more so during times of great grief. I’m afraid I was no help at all.
I have often pondered the question, though. Once I asked someone I thought might know. His answer to “the reward for a life well lived” was “a bigger house in Heaven.”
That answer seemed absurd to me and not the kind that would be of any help at all to a grieving mother. Do some people have bigger houses in Heaven? I don’t know. I do know that the safety of my family is far more important than the size of a house. I also know that, in my mind, houses and material riches have very little to do with the rewards that await us in eternity.
I went to a youth service with my niece after Katrina. The question came up of “Why do bad things happen?”
The youth minister answered, “We can’t always know why bad things happen, but we can always know that God is there for us.”
That seemed as good an answer as any to me. If we start trying to find something to blame for tragedy, soon we’ll start sounding like Pat Robertson, and nobody wants that.
As for the question of “the reward for a life well lived,” after years of pondering this I’ve come to the conclusion that the reward is “a life well lived.”
Most theologies I’ve been taught say that people who did not live good lives can and sometimes do find redemption in the end and get the same rewards in eternity as people who lived like Mother Theresa. Maybe that doesn’t always seem fair, but if we really have love and compassion in our hearts for others, we wouldn’t ask that they get what they deserve. We’d ask that they get the same mercy we want for ourselves.
A life full of bad choices and bad behaviors is punishment in itself, though. It is a life full of turmoil and instability. It is a life full of distrust and disconnectedness. It is a life full of consequences.
A life well lived is a gift in and of itself. It won’t shield us from tragedy, but it will bring us the strength to get through the bad times, and it will bring us peace and stability and trusting relationships with others. Life doesn’t get much better than that.
She was grieving. She had just lost a baby. She was questioning why she would be punished like that. She was asking why she would be asked to suffer so when she had done nothing to deserve it.
I didn’t know what to tell her. This is always a tough question, even more so during times of great grief. I’m afraid I was no help at all.
I have often pondered the question, though. Once I asked someone I thought might know. His answer to “the reward for a life well lived” was “a bigger house in Heaven.”
That answer seemed absurd to me and not the kind that would be of any help at all to a grieving mother. Do some people have bigger houses in Heaven? I don’t know. I do know that the safety of my family is far more important than the size of a house. I also know that, in my mind, houses and material riches have very little to do with the rewards that await us in eternity.
I went to a youth service with my niece after Katrina. The question came up of “Why do bad things happen?”
The youth minister answered, “We can’t always know why bad things happen, but we can always know that God is there for us.”
That seemed as good an answer as any to me. If we start trying to find something to blame for tragedy, soon we’ll start sounding like Pat Robertson, and nobody wants that.
As for the question of “the reward for a life well lived,” after years of pondering this I’ve come to the conclusion that the reward is “a life well lived.”
Most theologies I’ve been taught say that people who did not live good lives can and sometimes do find redemption in the end and get the same rewards in eternity as people who lived like Mother Theresa. Maybe that doesn’t always seem fair, but if we really have love and compassion in our hearts for others, we wouldn’t ask that they get what they deserve. We’d ask that they get the same mercy we want for ourselves.
A life full of bad choices and bad behaviors is punishment in itself, though. It is a life full of turmoil and instability. It is a life full of distrust and disconnectedness. It is a life full of consequences.
A life well lived is a gift in and of itself. It won’t shield us from tragedy, but it will bring us the strength to get through the bad times, and it will bring us peace and stability and trusting relationships with others. Life doesn’t get much better than that.
posted by Sharon Gerald | 4:37 AM
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