NOTE: I wrote this column three years ago, and it’s as true today as it was then.
What is the most precious thing you own? As surely as you live and breathe, it is life. Nothing matters more. Nothing is more valuable.
Why, then, do so many people value it so little?
Anything else in the world can be replaced by something almost identical.
Not so with a life. Each one is unique. Each is special. From the first heartbeat to the final breath.
People throughout history have tried to define and understand the meaning of life. We know it resides in a body on Earth. It begins with the single beat of a heart, expands with every breath and ends when the heart stops beating.
Yet, as special and mysterious as life is, too many people aim to destroy it.
In recent weeks a Berks County man was charged with murder as a result of a violent argument with his fiancee, a Montgomery County couple allegedly abused and murdered the woman’s adopted teenage daughter, a gunman went on a shooting spree in the Fort Lauderdale airport and is charged with killing five people. It’s a continuation of the violence, anger and hatred that seem to be growing in our society.
Why would a man shoot and kill his wife and three beautiful young children before killing himself?
Why do people take guns into schools, movie theaters and malls and randomly kill people they don’t know?
Why do protests over racial issues turn violent and deadly?
Why do radical groups fly airplanes into buildings and kill thousands or explode bombs on city streets?
Why do people who are unhappy feel they have a right to deny happiness for others?
Why do people who are angry believe that hurting or destroying others will satisfy that anger?
What is wrong with us?
There is no shortage of questions. There are few good answers.
It’s not just others whom we harm. Some people harm themselves. They make a decision that their life is no longer worth living, so they end it.
I often wonder why some people reach those points where they believe the lives of others or their own life have no value. How can things be that bad that the most precious of possessions is worth discarding?
Perhaps it’s because we have such high expectations of what life should be. Our wants overshadow our haves and needs. Shouldn’t life be enough?
Life in this world will end for every one of us, but that end should come in its own time.
I am encouraged when I read stories about people who fight against deadly diseases with all their energy. They battle for each additional day. They treasure every hour. Most times, I believe, that’s because they don’t want to be separated from the other important lives that surround them.
When a life is gone, there is an emptiness that can’t be filled for those left behind. It will never be replaced, but it can be remembered. Those memories are so much a part of the lives of others who remain.
For most people, it’s all about relationships. So we mourn when life ends for people who are close to us. Many of us also share in the sadness of tragedies that take the lives of strangers.
It’s in that caring and compassion that life as a whole in this world improves. Because the only way for good to overcome evil is for good people to do more good than evil people do evil.
The biggest threat to life isn’t disease or accidents. The biggest threat is hate. Especially when that hate is inflamed by bigotry, jealousy, intolerance and every other word that divides the human race.
So, what is this thing we call life?
We know it is a mystery that is beyond our understanding while we’re alive, but I believe that someday we will understand.
For now, after all of the questions and through all of the searching for knowledge and understanding, these are the things I have come to believe about life:
Life is a gift from God.
Life exists in God and God in life.
God is life.
Life is priceless.
What right do we have to take it away?
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