Life Is Fragile
Life is fragile.
I don’t know why, but everywhere I look seems to remind me of just how fragile life is. Take my son for example. He is a toddler. As he storms around the corner with his wobbly chubby toddler legs, he is just one misplaced step from an accident that could easily take him out for good. What about the weather? Earlier this week a tornado touched down in North Austin, literally uprooting people’s lives. What about the human race? Turn on or tune into any new source and you are overwhelmed with images from the war in Ukraine and the other countless horrors we inflict upon one another.
Life is fragile.
If you are reading or listening to this post means you have breath in your lungs and a heart beating in your chest. To me, that is a miracle. Have you stopped to think about how many times you have escaped death in the last 24 hours? The fact that I have made it this far in life stops me in my tracks. This heightened sense of life’s fragility has awakened me to the beauty of the small things that I often take for granted.
Take sleeping as an example. This is something everyone human does. The fact that I laid in a bed for 8 hours completely unconscious and woke up intact blows my mind! I then sat up and put weight on my legs… and they still worked. They then carried my half-awake self to the bathroom where I got to use indoor plumbing!
What, are you kidding me?!
I won’t bore you with the rest of my morning routine. But I assume it is much like yours. Brushing your teeth, getting some coffee, turning lights on, taking a shower… all completely ordinary things that most of you reading or listening toexperience every day of your life.
Life is fragile but it is also amazing. I am not as amazed by the things most of us think are amazing like technology or famous people. I am more amazed by ordinary things like the fact that I woke up this morning. Or that I have clean drinking water. Or that my child is alive and growing and is healthy.
Slowing down to think about these amazingly ordinary things has become a practice that helps shift my heart and mind from anxiety towards gratitude. I am more aware of and grateful for God’s common grace in my life. Jesus says that his heavenly father makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45).
God acts in the ordinariness of our lives. God blesses us through the ordinary things of life. The truth is that I am completely ordinary, and I am betting you are too. But that is good news because God cares about the ordinary. Which means he cares about you.
Life is fragile and that can be scary. But the fact that this could all end tomorrow is helping me embrace the ordinary. It is helping me be present. It is helping me be grateful. It is lifting my eyes from myself to someone and something that is outside of myself. May you too embrace the fragility and ordinariness of your own life.
Grace and peace ‘till we rise in glory.
