"Life" OR "Get Me Out of Here!"

Sabbath School Class—Life as Discovery and Hope

(Full class notes will most likely be posted on Friday.)
 
April 25, 2009
Larry R Evans

Introductory Reflection
“Would you tell me, please, which way I can go to get out of here?” asked Alice.
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where . . .” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll in the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)

These lines are from the fictional story entitled Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice who had fallen into a rabbit hole was led into an amazing world but she was now wanting out. While I haven’t read the novel these lines do raise some important issues. Many today, either by choice or through a chain of circumstances, find themselves in a world that is no longer satisfying and in some cases terrifying. In desperation they strike out with no specific plan in mind other than “get me out of here.” Such a plan is really no plan and doing so can lead to more confusion, anxiety and at times depression. Life can be much more. It was designed to be more. This week’s lesson points us in definite direction. It is not the conventional road to “happiness” but those who have traveled there tell not only of “happiness” but also of an inner joy that is beyond the fickleness of events which happen along life’s pathway.


Reflective Quiz

1. The quality of life is determined by the number of years lived. True or False?

2. Life is sacred. [Gn. 2:7; Jn. 1:1-3; Ps 139:13-16] True or False?

3. What we do with our own body is our own business. [1 Cor. 6:19,20; Rom. 12:1,2] True or False?

4. Jesus showed an interest in the physical well-being of others as well as their spiritual needs. [Mk. 5; 6:30-43; 4:16] True or False?

5. To be given more “life” on this earth we must first die. [1 Cor. 15:22,31; Jn. 3:7, 16-18; Jn. 12: 20-33] True or False?

6. We should consider others as superior to ourselves. [Mk. 12:30-33; Phil. 2:1-5] True or False?

7. If Christianity did not have so many restrictions it would be a full life. [Jn. 10:10; Mt. 19:16-26] True or False?

Concluding Reflections

“The Good Life,” as the lyrics of a popular song goes, defies human logic. The life for which we were created is not the one most traveled. Nor is it the creation of a façade, a cover-up if you will, that is no deeper than an external display of happiness. I appreciate the challenging words of C.S. Lewis when he wrote,

We must not suppose that if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world. C.S. Lewis

Life’s fulfillment is really about transformation. The misfortunes which come from living in a less than perfect world become tolerable because we see the bigger picture. We live in anticipation but we also live in a new kind of fullness provided by Christ’s indwelling presence. So much of what we get out of life comes from this Presence. It changes everything we see and do and what we are becoming.

“The Bible shows that we are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world, not Good Friday people living in an Easter world. That means we are destined for joy no matter how difficult our daily life. Something in us responds to the happiness other people experience, because we glimpse life as God intends it to be! It is an image imprinted in the spirit of Easter morning—pure, powerful, and potent, like the resurrection.” Found in Joy for a Woman’s Soul—Promises to Refresh Your Spirit, in chapter “A Joyful Up-look”, p. 86.

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