A Life Well Lived

A couple of weeks ago a dear friend died unexpectedly. He was only 60. I say ‘unexpectedly’, though I know his passing was no surprise to God. Rob loved Jesus and lived his life exuberantly, purposefully for God. John 10:10 says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Rob embraced the full, abundant life God planned for him. At his memorial it was said he lived 80 years in his 60 years.

In his sermon this week, Pastor Chris Price quoted from the website, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: “A rule of life is an intentional, conscious plan to keep God at the centre of everything we do.” Rob embodied this. Because Rob totally trusted God with his life, that every day the Lord had for him would come to pass, he was able to obey God’s call to serve whenever and wherever God sent him, without fear; to boldly go where not everyone would dare.

He so trusted God with his life and the lives of his family members that he and his wife not only took extended ministry trips to Africa, India, and Hungary, they often took their children with them, once leaving their two young teenage daughters in rural Uganda for three months. On one trip to India he took two high school students from the Christian school in Langley where he was principal. One of those students was my 16-year-old daughter. I had never let her wander the streets of Vancouver alone, yet Rob sent her off to explore the city of Singapore on her own. It was a life-changing experience, teaching her to trust God with her life, for direction when she became disoriented, and for provision when she was hungry.

Trusting that the number of his days were written in the Lamb’s book of life enabled Rob to live without the fear that often paralyzes our ability to hear and obey God. Trusting God, he ate fearlessly with his local hosts at roadside stands and in peasant’s huts in Uganda and at various questionable cafés in India, and he scraped off white mould and ate sausage he was given during a year-long ministry trip to Hungary where he and his wife worked with a Christian school and church. And he returned safely home to Canada each time. Ironically, after all the dubious, risky places he travelled, he died from septicemia caused by salmonella food poisoning contracted somehow in his hometown of Langley, BC. He had lived the full number of days God had prepared for him.

A Challenge to Trust

Luke 12:22-23 are well-known verses that encourage us to trust God in all things: “Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.’” In verse 31 we are encouraged not to worry but to ‘seek his kingdom’. And in verse 35: “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning.” Rob was one who seemed enthusiastically and perpetually ‘dressed ready for service’.

Surely God gives each of us a different kind of ‘service’ to perform, according to our giftings. Whether you have a gift of hospitality or generosity, encouragement or evangelism, I pray you (and I) will learn to surrender fears to the One who has numbered our days and written our names in His book of life. “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” (2 Tim 1:7)

“Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is.” (Psalm 39:4) Life is short. Daily, God puts ideas into our heads to serve or bless others or tell them about Jesus. How often do we do it? What’s stopping us?

May it be said of me that I was not paralyzed by a fear of death or by what others might think of me, but that I did what the Lord asked of me. May it be said that mine was a life well-lived.