Every Day, Life
How will you live out this day you’ve been given?
Every day we have the chance to speak life and reflect love into the lives of others. I wonder, how often do we take that opportunity. How often do I take that chance afforded to me?
Am I too focused on me and my life to infuse the life of another with hope and encouragement? Am I too distracted to love others?
Sometimes I find it easier to withdraw into myself. It’s safer. It requires less energy. It allows me to move through the world unnoticed, almost invisible, as if that were a power to covet.
We are designed for relationship. It is knit into our very being, this desire to connect with others. If we consider ourselves sojourners in this world, because this world ultimately is not our true home, then we would do well to journey through our days creating deeper connections with others.
We all know it is easier to stand back up when we stumble and fall if someone offers us a hand, helping us back to our feet. And Scripture tells us that a cord of three strands is not easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12). The truth is we are designed for more than what we tend to do with our lives, our gifts, our time, our energy.
There is risk in any relationship. There is a chance of being hurt, disappointed, abandoned, rejected. But it is a risk I have become more willing to take as I get older. There is greater pain in loneliness and isolation than in being hurt by a relationship.
Today stretches out before me. The morning is still quiet except for the music in my earbuds. The day is still dark and my house has not yet come to life. It will, and when it does, the busyness begins as we get ready for school and appointments and chores and all the things written out on calendars and bullet lists.
And so now, in the quiet of the morning, is the time to choose how I will live out this day. Now is the time for me to decide I will love others as unconditionally as I am able. I will take moments to speak kindness and to encourage and to inspire. I will choose to plant words of hope and truth in the hearts and lives of others.
It’s not a difficult thing to do, but it is most certainly always a choice. And it’s a choice I believe matters because it’s a chance to add beauty and goodness to a world in desperate need of it.
This post is part of a series of short freewriting prompts based on a single word. With the word in mind, I tune into a writing playlist, typically choose two songs, and write without editing or stopping until the two songs are finished because showing up is just as important as the words that end up on the page.
Today’s word — chance.
