I have to run a session for fellow chaplains next Friday, so this morning I grabbed a book out of my bookshelf that I thought might be helpful. I just arrived back in my office after visiting fire stations, I opened the book and this quote jumped out at me. I underlined at some stage in the past.
"When man is no longer able to look beyond his own death and relate himself to what extends beyond the time and space of his life, he loses his desire to create and the excitement of being human." ("The Wounded Healer" Henri J. M. Nouwen )
It struck me that this thought was so true about what I see to be "life after death". If I see no cause bigger than my life span to live for, to give myself to, then I miss out on an essential part of being human. Our motivation is that there are values, causes and truths to give ourselves to that are greater than us. This motivation will draw the best out of us, make us more fully human and more fully "alive". That is a quality of life that the writer of the fourth Gospel calls, "Eternal Life", the life that has a "God-like" qualities about it.
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