Nathan Stam
Childen/Communications Pastor
One of my favorite quotes is from Henry David Thoreau. He once wrote: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” When I think about my life and my future this is quite the sobering thought—that I could waste my life striving after things that don’t really matter and not living the way God meant for me to live!
How easy is it, especially in our culture, to settle into a comfort zone and then be unable to break free? Ruts wait for us at every turn of our lives and they’re easy to get into and seemingly impossible to get out of. Half the time we don’t even realize that we’ve fallen into one. As some of our favorite rockers from Ohio once sang, “I’m stuck inside this rut that I fell into by mistake.”
How about instead of living lives of quiet desperation we lead lives of outrageously loud obedience to Christ? Would that change the way we do our jobs, relate to our co-workers, treat our spouses, love our neighbors, and raise our children? Would it change our priorities in life at all? Instead of living for the weekend, or vacation, or the next gadget we could live to see Jesus speak through us in all of our relationships? What an adventure that would be!
Let’s shake off this complacency together and burn out bright for God. Let our lives not be characterized by quiet desperation and regrets for what we could have been, but instead let us be known as men and women who follow hard after God and who lived our lives as a hymn to Christ!
Are you with me?
