Indiana Jones spent his last crusade searching for it. Ponce de Leon explored Florida to locate it. People spend thousands of dollars personally each year to hold onto it.
What is “it,” you ask? “It” is LIFE. Real life. Life to the maximum. Life to the fullest. Life without limits.
Jone’s Holy Grail quest promised the payoff of eternal life. Ponce de Leon went looking for the fountain of youth to maintain life in the swamps that now house Disney World. People spend big bucks yearly to doctors and medicine in order to keep us living one more day. We are obsessed with life.
It is our desire for life that causes parents to overly protect their children, fail to partake in mission trips to “dangerous areas” to avoid risk, and take out insurance policies for our insurance policies to keep us comfortable regardless of what may come. However, despite all our explorations, all our efforts, we cannot hold onto life. In fact, the stronger we try to hold onto life, the faster it seems to slip through our fingers. By this I mean that the more we worry about life, the less we enjoy it . . . all the while our hair gets grayer, our back gets sorer, and our 401K gets smaller. Life seems so fleeting.
God speaks to this issue. God knows that we desire life. God knows that many of our greatest fears involve death to ourselves or to those we love. God knows that despite our best efforts, humans do a lousy job of preserving life. The facts are simply hard to argue with: 1 out of 1 people die. In light of our difficulty, God offers to us as a gift what we cannot hold onto on our own. God offers us life. Eternal life. Life without limits.
This Sunday at Wildwood Community Church in both our 9:30 and 10:50 worship services, we will be wrapping up our 7 part series on the book of 1 John by looking at 1 John 5:6-13 . . . a passage that talks about how we can experience life without limits. I hope you can join us this weekend as we worship our Savior and see the hope that never dies.