Old things, wonderful things, used things - wonderfully used up things . . .

Van Gough’s painting of old shoes reminds me that too soon my life will draw to its close. The adventure will end; the party will be over. It would be good to know that this wee alotment of time has been well used, even then used up – by full and deep relationships, with family and others, through adventures, in honest observation and full exploration.

'There is a time for everything under the sun,' allegedly wrote King Solomon, the Hebrew Qoholeth (preacher). 'A time to die,' too, for all things eventually pass: the best relationships, adventures, that trip, the job, as we journey on and enter more fully into the ‘new’ God has for us. And further still - you can't threaten Christians with Heaven. The Greater Real, the Life Eternal and Abundant, the New Creation is what we long for, even as we embrace our stewardly responsibilities and the wonders of this life.

Some folk are wonderfully aged by life, well done through lives shared in sacrificial love and care, perhaps worn out too, by tragedy and disappointment. Yet there are some folk, as Tony Compolo put it once in my hearing, 'who ‘tip-toe through life, so they may arrive safely at Death’s door.’

I think God invites us to quest and even to risk everything, for true Love and for true Life’s sake.

To get in on such now is certainly one of the wonders and great mysteries God presents to us. We can choose to lay aside things that are 'small' and our lesser loyalties that we might seek after Truth, along the Way: that Life we find in Christ as we seek Him with all our heart.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to live life to the full? I think we can at least begin to do so, in the here and now, making entry into the greater Real of God’s Presence and the embrace of God's welcome.

If we so desire, we can through repentance and faith experience the deep, wide and eternal Life God intends for us: – the Life Jesus called ‘Abundant.’