It's Life That Matters

From Dostoevsky comes the poignant comment of a young man who knew he had little left of mortal life. “It’s natural to believe,” he says, “that everyone else thinks too little of life and is apt to waste it too cheaply, and to use it too lazily, too shamelessly . . . It’s life that matters, nothing but life⎯the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process . . . If he’s alive he has everything in his power! Whose fault is it he doesn’t understand that?”¹²⁵

“If he’s alive he has everything!” Without life we have nothing. And he who has a mortal life, only limited life, has too little, since every day brings him nearer to the end of all that has meaning for him. It is as Ruskin remarked⎯”There is no wealth but life.” Therefore the impact of this passage: “Behold, He that hath eternal life is rich.”

This brings us again to the importance of belief, the importance of perspective, the importance of putting important and unimportant things in their proper place⎯for what we believe about ourselves, about others, about God, about life, is of incalculable consequence, since what a man believes or knows or thinks he is, and what he thinks life’s purpose is, largely determine how he lives; and how he lives largely determines what he is like⎯including the accumulations that represent his efforts and interests.

Not to work for what we believe would be a waste of life. And we would do well to look to what we do, to what we make; to what causes we serve, to all our choices, and to the commandments we keep; to the love and respect of family and friends, and to the reality of our relationship to Him who made us in His image, and from whom we have the assurance that people and personality are eternal and that hereafter, even as here, we shall know and recognize, in literal reality, our family and friends⎯and shall always be our separate selves.

Time is short⎯but eternity is endlessly long. “It’s life that matters . . . the everlasting perpetual process.” He who is alive has everything⎯”Whose fault is it if he doesn’t understand that?”