living with your death date (part 1)

i'm a little morbid i suppose. for me, it seems that the only way to really live a focused life in the present is to come to grips with my future death. maybe that's true for you too.

an average child sees 8,000 murders on TV by the time they reach middle school. but the death of real people, and our own in particular, seems surreal. shouldn't technology and medical advances have figured death out by now? unfortunately, the internet pharmacy in our spam folder doesn't stock the meds needed to fix the whole dying problem.

i couldn't help but bike in the mountains here in pasadena. last sunday i had my first real mountain biking "incident." it wasn't that big of a deal...my front wheel got stuck and i flipped over the handlebars. i was thankful for my helmet because my head was the first to hit the dirt. i know there are many worse stories, but i realized that i could have just as easily flipped over the edge of a cliff.

moses at the end of his life reflected in a prayer to Yahweh, "teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom" (psalm 90:12.) and the existential teacher in ecclesiastes writes, "it is better to spend your time at funerals than at festivals. for you are going to die, and you should think about it while there is still time" (ecc. 7:1).

of course older people think this way, but can young people? i've often wondered how i could remind myself often about my own death. i finally came up with a simple way in the form of a bunch of little boxes. here it is as a pdf or as a publisher file. or on scribd.com....

Life Months Blank

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Religion

there are eighty boxes on the page, each with twelve months. at the beginning of each month, i scratch off a month and reflect on my dreams, goals, etc. it was a crazy feeling scratching off more than one-third of my life when i first did this! i was thankful that i follow jesus the messiah when it comes to my life and death because my death is getting closer!

i know this is not the most graphically appealing way, so help me out if you're graphically inclined. :) but try it out and let me know what affect it has on your mindset after a few months.

rob bell on speed

i was shocked recently to find out that only 25% of christian leaders finish well. (see bobby clinton's article on finishing well.) only one in four! of course everyone can name some of the obvious reasons....abuse of power, inappropriate sexual relationships, improper use of money, etc.

but how about this one...plateauing. running on old steam, failing to learn new things, staying in the same place too long - these are all symptoms of plateauing, and it's one of six reasons leaders fail to end well.

a key to avoiding the leadership plateau is reading to learn. i remember a camp director i worked under used to aways say, "readers are leaders." i thought he was being witty, but corny. now i see he is right.

now what if you don't like to read? lots of people don't now. we're used to fast-paced video, split second information gathering, and being connected to our ipods all day. i have a solution that just might fit....listening to talks/lectures/sermons at a fast-paced tempo on an mp3 player.

i found that this company (i should see if i can get a cut of any referrals :) sells mp3 players that have a feature called "tempo." not play speed, where your sermon or audio book speaker sounds like chipmunk, but tempo....increasing the speed without affecting pitch. pretty cool, eh? i've been using one for a year now and i love it. i can listen to a message and cut off 1/3 of the original time. (maybe i like it because i talk fast and i'm just making the world like me ;)

what should you listen to? well, that's totally up to you. you could listen to barack obama's speech on race. (i haven't listened to it yet.) you could listen to mark driscoll if you don't mind a little abrasiveness or rob bell if you don't mind a little nebulousness. (that's a real word!) NT Wright has some good lectures online. or if you like john piper, some of his stuff is here. (you like how i'm listing the spectrum? :) my personal favorite is listening to dead guys like A.W. Tozer or C.H. Spurgeon. at least you can guarantee that they ended well and have something good to say. my favorite talks of all time are on my blog.

who else do you like to listen to?

so now i've given you one more reason you can use that drive time or time spent on an exercise bike to keep away from from that scary plateau.