How Long Have You Lived?

Sociologist Tony Campolo once asked a group of students taking a special seminar, “How long have you lived?” Now, I’m sure that many of us would answer right away by giving our age. Perhaps we’d say something like this: “I’m 18,” or “I’m 51,” or “I’m 29 for the second time round!” But Campolo was not really asking “how long you have existed as a breathing, functioning member of the human race.” The question was really about how much time the students had spent being fully alive. You see, many “people are born and years later die without really having lived at all.” They eat and sleep, work and reproduce, and somehow find themselves wondering whether life is just a meaningless passage of time that goes on until finally they arrive at death’s door.

What does it mean to be fully alive? Well, first of all, it means that we can no longer afford to take life and its many, many wonderful blessings for granted. Somehow we must develop a heightened awareness that every moment does matter, that each day holds profound promise and opportunity for those who are willing to seize them. As someone once said, “Every day is a new life to a wise man or woman.” How wonderful to think that we have before each one of us “a new world in the morning!” But more importantly, we must take seriously the words of Jesus when He said, “I have come that they may have Life, and may have it in abundance” (Jn. 10:10, Weymouth).

Real life begins with Jesus Christ! Without Him, none of us can ever hope to become fully alive. He is the One who gives life its meaning and purpose, and imparts a real passion for living life to its fullest. In fact, real Christians definitely live better than those who do not know Christ because they have discovered that through Christ He “has given everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3, NIV). Along with this, the apostle Paul said that God “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we belong to Christ” (Eph. 1:3, NLT). Salvation, new life, the family of God, love, joy and peace, and so much more are ours in abundance because we have been made fully alive in Christ!