Life.

How would you describe life?  Some may say fleeting; which is certainly true.  Others might call it hard, rough, or unfair.  But, what is life, really?  Truly?  When you really think about it, life is all we have.  Without life you have nothing else.  If you don't have life; you do not exist.  Yes, life is fleeting.  Very fleeting.  Yet, it is really all we possess on this earth.  We can never get the time we spend back.  Never.

  Last year I had seven people who I knew pass away from this life.  Seven precious people in seven months.  First, my grandmother, on the day before my birthday.  My great-grandmother not long after that.  Three very dear people from our church.  And a little boy who I "knew" only through a blog his mother kept, but he passed away from cancer at age six.  All of these people; all at different walks of life, all left this earth.  They all had things in common.  They all shed tears.  They all had hardships.  They all had trials, joys, hope, and moments of fear.  They all had life.

Life.

 Each person is completely different.  Each person has a completely different story.  No one lives the same life, yet we all live.  We all breathe.  We all have moments of complete sadness and despair, and tears of joy.  Moments when we wanted to stand on the highest mountain and shout, "I love life!"  And moments that made us want to curl up in a ball and die.  Life is full of ups and downs.  Of grief and pain, yet of love and hope.

In one word, life is beautiful.  

   Beauty does not equal perfection.  Beauty does not equal joy and hope at every second.  Sometimes beauty is a tear stained cheek.  But it is still beauty.  Life will never be perfect.  It will be a mess!  But there are many different things that make it beautiful.  Think of all the different things you have loved and experienced.  Sunrises.  Babies' giggles.  An elderly smile.  Joy on a child's face at Christmas time.  Cool grass against your toes.  A animal nibbling at your hair.  Uncontrollable laughter with friends.  Holding hands as you walk quietly.  These moments that seem to not even need words.  They themselves say it all.  These are little puzzle pieces that fit together to form life's beauty.

No matter how sad life gets though, it is worth living.  Because we have a purpose.  We have a reason we are here, and nothing will ever change or affect that purpose.  Our purpose is solely this:  To bring God glory.  That is the reason we exist.  The LORD created us because he loved us. He looked on Him creation, including us, and called it good.  Very good.  And it is very good because He created it.  But sin got in the way.  And we became terrible, fallen creatures.  But, because the LORD is such an amazing, loving, holy God, he created a way for us to, even in our fallen state, bring Him glory.  To complete our purpose.  And how we do that is by following His Son, Jesus Christ.  When we confess that Christ is LORD, that the only way to eternal life is through Him, and then strive to live our life serving Him and bringing Him glory, we have completed our purpose.  Now, that is an ongoing challenge.  It is far from being something that gets checked off our to-do list and is then done forever.  This is something that we must think about, pursue, and strive for by Christ's grace constantly.  And we will fail.  But through God's grace and love we can keep trying.  Life will never be meaningless as long as we have Christ as the center.

  But, life will come to an end.  And it is so hard for those of us left on this side.  While we know, if they trusted in Christ, that they are in Heaven, it is still very saddening to be left behind by those so dear to us.  It is something that we never get over.  Not on this side of eternity.  But, we can have hope.  Even through the sadness, we can have hope in Christ.  Hope in the eternity that we have waiting for us.  Hope that someday our Savior will call us home as well.

  Hopefully this post has been one that as made you stop and think.  About how important is is to not waste our time, but instead do the things that have eternal value: spending time with family, witnessing, reading our Bible, praying.  But there is one other very important point I want to bring up.

  Life is beautiful.  So doesn't everyone deserve to live it?  Abortion is one of the worst, and yet quite hidden, sins.  It is murder.  There are many different excuses given to why abortion could be right, but really it very easy to truly see how truly terrible it is.  They say it is a woman's right to choose, but why isn't it considered a serial killer's right to choose too?  When someone is pregnant, it is because there is a baby human growing inside of them.  You aren't pregnant if you only have tissue inside you.  Tissue doesn't suddenly become human.  A baby is human from the moment of conception.  And every single person, no matter if they are still growing in a mother's womb, or if they are a successful businessman, or if they are a village child in Africa, needs to have the right to live.  They all need have a right to be born.  To breathe, to love, to be loved.  To laugh, and smile, to see a sunset and drink water.  The excuse that they might not have a good life is not valid reason at all.  None of us have perfect lives.  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't live at all.

  Let us live each moment to the Glory of God, and with the amazing appreciation for the beautiful gift of life itself.

~Jessica Joy