Mid-life Crisis

 

“Those who are righteous will be long remembered.” (Psalms 112:7 NLT)

I’ve got another birthday on the horizon. Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and begin my 39th trip around the sun. Thirty-eight has been one blurred blip of grief and duty, it’s hard to believe it’s already over. Last year, on my birthday, the estate lawyer issued a verdict: the legal matters would consume a full year of my life. He wasn’t wrong.

I would suppose the closer a person hedges to forty, the more they might consider the weight of their one life; the direction and value of their days. In the wake my past year, this consideration feels urgent. I must live twice as focused in the coming days, making up for the 365 I’ve lost. This morning, the psalmist reminds me how to make my one life count.

Righteousness is the longest legacy we can leave. Righteousness is what our children, our congregation and our community will remember when we’ve passed. It’s righteousness that will hold up under the unforgiving fire of time. 

Righteousness, at it’s purest form, is a life of love. It’s a life surrendered to the perfect sacrifice of Christ and an steady reflection of Him in our own world.

Many folks have a mid-life crisis right about now. I suppose it comes from gazing over the first half of living and finding it wanting. The typical response? Buy a sports car, get a tattoo or trade-in a decades-old marriage in for a new young thing.

My midlife crisis? I’m going to do something crazy. I’m going to smile more. I’m going to give my life away like I’ve never been hurt and people don’t die. I’m going to love the people in front of me with every breath I have left in me.

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is offer the weary world another smile.

“A glad heart makes a happy face; a broken heart crushes the spirit.” (Proverbs 15:13 NLT)

Lord, make us brave as we face another day. Make us righteous as we continue to pursue You. Help us live as the psalmist declared; confident, fearless, generous, compassionate and right by You. May our mid-life crises remake us more into Your image. Amen.