A Life Well Lived!

Yesterday Jon and I went over to the pasture to look at our son’s beautiful longhorn cows.  As we were looking at the cows, we were also admiring the many large oak trees. Among the beautiful green trees there was one that was barren, gray and had no sign of life.  My artist imagination began to see in that old massive dead tree, “A life well lived.”

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As I thought further about that old tree with the limbs breaking and hanging downward toward the ground,  I could not help but wonder how many storms it had gone through in an earlier time and still stood strong and tall.  I wonder how many birds had built their nest and raised their young in the strong limbs of that tree or how many family picnics had been shaded from the sun by its spreading branches, or how many squirrels and its young had made it through the winter feasting on that tree’s acorns.   Truly its roots had grown deep and strong. Yes, I just saw a” life well lived” when I saw that tree that had now finished what it was created to do.

Psalm 1:1-3 says as I paraphrase these verses: “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the way of the wicked, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. He will be like a tree firmly planted by the streams of water which will yield its fruit in its season.” Over the last several months we have experienced with our friends the death of their loved ones. Time and time again as I reflect on those lives that are now in the presence of our heavenly Father, I see lives that honored the Lord. I watched their love for their family and their love for the Lord expressed in so many different ways.  Some prayer warriors, some Bible teachers, some loving servants, but all had one beautiful characteristic; they loved Jesus with all their heart. How blessed are those of us that were touched and impacted by the fruit of their labor here on earth.

I pray that it can be said of us one day as others look back on our lives, truly their life was a, “A Life Well Lived.”

Joy,

Phyllis

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