Today my agenda is to write about life. Long story short, “life” is the subject matter of a message I’ve been asked to share this coming Sunday. Life is a vibrant, vigorous, charged, vital, dynamic concept, and so it’s critically important that I do the subject justice when I speak; especially as the context is God’s compelling invitation for each one of us to live like we mean it – because God most certainly meant it when we were created.

It’s no coincidence, then, that this image of my granddaughter, Rebekah, popped up directly in the middle of my writing. Talk about the definition of vibrant life.

If Jesus could have pulled out a photograph that represented “vibrant life” when he was explaining the concept to his followers, this is exactly the kind of image he surly would have gone for. “Real and eternal life,” the Master said in John’s Gospel – and he must have had a life-charged expression on his face when he said it – “more and better life than [you] ever dreamed of.”

STOKED! These kids are hard-wired for life; hard-wired for joy. Look at David, just full, full, full to bursting with enthusiasm. Then we grow older, and some of us grow more cynical, and we forget – little by little we forget. We lose touch with the heart of our connection to pure joy and we replace it with our own contrived substitutions until we come to the point where we no longer even believe the real thing exists.

And Jesus is here to tell us that he is willing to guide us back to the source of life, that he is willing to literally be our companion as we recalibrate the pathways to the quality of life he constantly refers to in his teaching.

That is what I intend to communicate this weekend. That this Lenten journey, this pilgrimage down the dusty road to Jerusalem, will become an insistent, winsome invitation to engage the fullness of life.

I pray that we will respond to this invitation with enthusiasm and renewed commitment. Because what this world needs today a clear and compelling testimony to authentic life.

“Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.” (Philippians 2:15-16)

– DEREK