The Point of Life

I have been reading Anne Lamott's 2002 novel entitled Blue Shoe. At one point in the protagonist's musing about her messy life (ex-husband that she still sleeps with, a mother who is increasingly becoming more and more senile, a father who perhaps fathered a child with a young girl, two children who show signs of anxiety, and loneliness as a single mother), she quotes Kafka. Never one to be a beacon of life during his relatively short life, Kafka said, "The point of life is that it ends." I would rather think, as a Christian, that the point of life is that it never ends. Of course, we are all realists to know that physical life ends, but, according to the Scripture we have spent our lives subscribing to, a never-ending life of joy awaits us in eternity.

I suppose all of us think about our mortality more as we age and the brief transience of our lives. A holiday movie that addresses this issue beautifully is currently playing: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. While I have not seen the movie as yet, I have read the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story upon which it is based. Its key point is that we need to enjoy and savor the moments on earth that we have. The movie supposedly is more of a love story as the characters age--one forward and the other backward--and the very short time we have to love each other.

The church that I currently attend believes the kingdom of God is on this earth; my previous church believes the kingdom of God is in eternity when all will be perfect. Since I am an amalgamation of all my religious teaching, I believe both ideas are possible. We need to work on this earth to fulfill Christ's view of His kingdom: a place of justice and peace. We also need to keep in mind that the point of life may not be that it ends, but that it is just beginning.