A Thought

Several years ago I was reading a book by John Piper (and I can't remember which one now) where he had a list of a man's resolutions made with the aim of remembering what a wondrous thing life really is.  There was one resolution in particular that stuck in my head, and I thought of it again last night as I walked out the doors of the grocery store at dusk.  


Thankfully, through the wondrous invention of search engines and Desiring God's propensity to put everything online, I was able to locate the list I was searching for in a sermon preached by Piper in 1980.  The list was written by one of his literature professor's at Wheaton, Clyde Kilby.  The very first resolution is the one that has stayed with me all these years:

At least once every day I shall look steadily

up at the sky and remember that I, a 

consciousness with a conscience, am on a

planet traveling in space with wonderfully

mysterious things above me and about me.

Do you every stop to remember that you are on a planet traveling through blackest space?  Wow.  Here are a few other of Professor Kilby's resolutions.

• I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.
• I shall not turn my life into a thin straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.
• I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is just now.

I hope you have a great day.  It's not just another "ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours."