Provided by CN Building Adult Ministries Resource Center
In his book, Run with the Horses, Eugene Peterson recounts the story in which William Stafford was once asked in an interview, “When did you decide to be a poet?” He responded that the question was wrongly put. “Everyone is born a poet—a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is why did the other people stop.”
To put it another way, Stafford was doing what everybody starts out doing, being human. And he didn’t stop.
This week, I met 18-month-old Joshua, running up and down the hallway outside our home, entertaining his gramma, conquering new territory, and delighting in the repetitive sound and shape of ‘first words’ as they echoed in the passageway. He was ‘being’ human.
With Stafford’s quote still on my mind, little Joshua made me think. It occurs to me that ‘being’ may well be one of our greatest challenges as we age. There was a time when we were excited about ‘being,’ like Joshua. Is it still true for us today, like Stafford?
When did you decide to be? Most often when we hear this question it doesn’t stop there. It goes something like, “When did you decide to be a pastor? An architect? A farmer? A teacher? When I was young, I wanted to be a cowboy, a policeman and a pilot. Worthy ‘want-to-be’s,’ but when I grew up, these wants faded as the process of ‘being’ continued.
Maturing has to do with being and becoming. The Apostle Paul spoke of arriving at “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). I still have miles on this score. Some days I think I am breaking up rather than growing up. That’s when the Apostle Paul and William Stafford and Eugene Peterson and little Joshua all remind me that today is my (and your) opportunity to be a child of God becoming a mature Christ-like human.
The question is not am I becoming? The question is who am I becoming? In summary, let’s just agree that life’s second half is not a good time to deteriorate, to only think in terms of what we have been. This is an absolutely key moment in time in which God wants us to be and to become. Perhaps William Shakespeare (Hamlet) may have been thinking about us when he wrote the immortal line, “To be or not to be, that is the question.”
When did you decide to be? If it has been a while and life’s sharp edge maybe now is a good time. As you do, stir the glowing embers of two or three of your peers and leave a light on for the next generation.
