Knowledge is becoming your own person!

The Gamble

We tend to live our lives so callously in our youth. We interact with people as if they are guaranteed a tomorrow! We get caught up in this world, our jobs, friends, drama, tv shows, success, etc that we forget about how fragile life is. We easily lose focus of priorities and begin missing out on things most important to us! It is sad that it takes reminders of loved ones passing for us to remember how we need to re-prioritize but soon after lose our focus again.

I am about to turn 28 years old and still am very young! Though I feel as though I just graduated High School! It is amazing to me how next August will be 4 years out of college! I have been married for almost 9 years! My 10 year high school reunion is next year! I am almost 30…I remember turning 18 like it was yesterday! This is not just my feelings but people of all ages. It is almost as if our body ages faster than our minds? We feel and think we are younger than we are until we do some activity that reminds us…umm…you can’t do that anymore! You are not as good as you once was but in our mind we still think we are!

This statement is a scary concept, “Our bodies age faster than our mind does”. It reveals how in our minds we are forever young, there is always tomorrow, and it is as if we are blinded to the fact life is passing us by. We don’t see it until someone we love dies, some 2 year old is now joining the youth group, kids you taught in junior high are now starting college!

We work so hard towards the American Dream, 12 hr days x 6-7 days a week! Trying to make a life for ourselves and our family! But that goal is so contradictory. For example, if I get up at 6am to get ready for work, speak to my wife briefly while getting ready, leave work to be there by 7:15a.m. and I get off at 5:00pm(hah!) and get home around 6pm. I get to spend 2-3 hrs with her before I go to bed. ITS THE WEEKEND…wait, we got this party, this to do, and that to do, or I got to work this weekend, etc! How much time are we spending with our family? The way life is, we already spend more time with our coworkers that we will with our spouse and children.

So lets say I did hit the jackpot and achieved the “American Dream” whatever exactly that means, what does it gain me? I get to live it up for the rest of my life? Well how long is that? At what point is the American Dream worth more than time with your wife and kids? Its NEVER is, but I will tell you exactly what it is!

Its a gamble! People are gambling that they can sacrifice their life, time with their family, to achieve a idea of “wealth” assuming they will get 20 - 30 good years to enjoy it and can accomplish this before death strikes them or their loved ones. So when they die, how does their hard work and wealth profit them? Might create lazy kids but for the man who achieved the “American Dream”, it does not profit him at all! He loses regardless.

Luke 9:25, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?”

Don’t gamble your life chasing a concept of wealth! Don’t gamble your wife, your kids, your parents, your grandparents, your friends chasing a concept of wealth! Take a step back, look at your life, where you live, and find the wealth and blessing that you already possess! We as Americans are WEALTHY! Open your eyes, see the world for what it is, see the poverty that has over half the worlds population under its bondage! DON’T gamble your life, your time, for something you ALREADY HAVE! Do you realize that most people in this world would trade situations with you without batting an eye! Do you realize that 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean water…read this.

“Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. Those hours are crucial, preventing many from working or attending school. Additionally, collecting water puts them at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault. Children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water.  Of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old.”

Can you see that the basics we take for granted in life are blessings! Can you see the fact that you are not starving your blessed! You are not sleeping in a card board box, or a tent…we are sooo blessed and we can’t even see it! We are blinded and chase after MORE and MORE and MORE and MORE and MORE and MORE and MORE and MORE and then its to late…you lost it all! There is 1 thing in life that is unreplaceable, limited, and more precious than money, houses, cars, etc and that is time. Yet we so callously gamble it away as if we and/or our loved ones will live forever!