Let It Beat

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to their grave with the song still in them."
- Thoreau

"I can't believe that we would lie in our graves, wondering if we had spent our living days well. 
I can't believe that we would lie in our graves dreaming of things that we might have been, 
could have been, 
maybe." - Lie In Our Graves, Dave Matthews


How many steps do you take each day, pressed down and worn out? I marvel at the lives we all live, our painful moments of self-affliction or self-deflection. When it comes to the world around us we follow the same patterns. We either spend each day with the shields up or our hands down. It's all about the punches; we're either blocking them or taking them.

This is not how God created us to live. I guarantee it. I'm the worst example of living life to reflect this belief, but I'm trying.  It's Easter Weekend and I am reminded yet again that at the end of the day, it's not about me.

A living example of how life should be lived can be found in the very walk that Jesus took to die. He prayed. He took his beatings. He took up his cross. He carried it as far as he could, then he was willing to accept help (from Simeon, who was ordered to his side by the Romans). Jesus then prayed for those very souls who were persecuting him, including the thief to his left while, amazingly, hands and feet nailed to a cross, he witnessed and offered salvation to the thief to his right. Then, ever the teacher, in the ultimate act of education he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Not a cry of defeat but a direct reminder to those present of Psalm 22, written some 1500 years earlier, that predicted his coming, his life and this exact ending to it, including a ton of the actual details. His apparent moment of defeat was, in actuality, his greatest triumph.

And the rest of that Psalm? It's all about hope. So is the rest of the story that followed the cross and that empty tomb. That's all about hope as well.


Which means you and I should answer those feelings of desperation and confusion that come over us from time to time with that very same thing; hope. Hope is what your heart is made of. So let it beat.