Life in all its fullness

Welcome to my first Hillside blog. I've delayed doing this because I was trying to think of something deep and meaningful to say but I'm not Ghandi or Jesus and those fleeting moments of insight are few and far between so I decided to take the bull by the horns and just blog.

And what I would like to blog about is taking the bull by the horns and just doing it. I preached late last year on this theme but feel that this being the beginning of the year (if the 1 Feb counts as the beginning of the year) it is a good time to renew my commitment to that.

One of the reasons I follow Christ is because of his message about the fullness of life. That promise gets me because I feel, like so many others, that living in Jozi, getting caught up in the rat race, means that I tend to only half live my life. So what does living life to the full or the fullness of life mean?

I think that it means being fully human - experiencing everything that humanity has to offer - our capacity for sadness and immense joy, our capacity to love and be loved, our capacity to empathise, our capacity to connect emotionally, spiritually, physically, sexually, our capacity to do good work, our capacity to plant and nurture and see things we have nurtured grow to fruition, our capacity to connect with God in relationship.

It's about fulfilling the desires of our hearts, souls, minds and bodies and helping others to do the same.

I'm an adrenaline junkie so for me it's a roller coaster ride or a bungee jump or a sky dive.

But how do we get there in day to day life?

A couple of things:
1. It is about not sweating the small stuff - life is too short to let your blood boil over the taxi driver that just cut you off. Save your energy for the big stuff
2. It's about taking notice of the small stuff - sound like a contradiction? Well the contradiction is that we really only take notice of the irritating small stuff. We hardly ever stop to admire that plant or that bird or the people in our lives that we take for granted.
3. Plan for big stuff - is there something you've wanted to do forever? This is the time to do it. And don't spend too long planning - JUST DO IT remember! I jumped off Bloukrans bridge last year and fell 216m before bouncing back on the bungee rope - what a rush! Leap of faith like I've never experienced.
4. Live in community - find people who are asking the questions you are asking, doing the things you are doing and let them affirm you as you affirm them. One of the first things Jesus did was call his disciples. We don't live or do ministry alone - we work and live and find ourselves in others
5. Live out of community - contradictions, contradictions... What I mean is sometimes when we socialise with the same people we don't challenge ourselves or push our boundaries. Stepping out of our comfort zones and meeting people from different faith, class, race, work, or area backgrounds gives us a glimpse into other parts of God's kingdom
6. Be alone - sometimes when we are constantly surrounded by people (and remember the cast of Grey's anatomy and the DJ's on the radio also count as people that you surround yourself with) we block out our inner voice and the voice of God. It is so important to take time to reflect, to pray, to think and to JUST BE... sometimes that's hard but often it's just what we need
7. Serve - we never fully know our or God's capacity to love and empathise and be fully human until we serve another person. Think of something that you are passionate about. How can you turn that into an opportunity of service.

Wishing you and me the fullness of life this year