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meaningful life Life fo r you should never be meaningless, never be boring , never be without lasting purpose
B Y JAMES C. UPSHAW
I remember seeing a number of years ago a movie of the life of Eddie Rickenbacker, in which there was one scene I have never forgotten because it so clearly illus trates the way many of us are living today. The scene occurred when Rickenbacker was in his early teens, interested in building, in putting things together, in mo tion—but not yet mature enough to harness that motion to a useful purpose. The boy built a machine that ran beautifully, turned lots of wheels, made much noise and gave the impression of important activi ty, but it accomplished nothing. He proudly exhibited the machine to his father, who looked it over care fully, observed all its activity, and said very simply, “ Son, if you can’t hitch it to something, don’t build it. Many of us, if we stop and think, will find that we are building lives like this young man’s machine — lives that are terribly active with lots of things to do and places to go, lots of people to meet, but lives which are not producing anything that has lasting value. Lives that are not hitched to anything. And if we look close enough at our lives
we may find that much of our ac tivity is carried on simply to keep us from thinking about the fact that we are living on a treadmill. I remember reading in one of our national magazines an article by a night club owner who said that he had to have two orchestras —- one in each end of his night club, each playing a particularly dis tracting kind of music because, he said, if the people who were his customers ever stopped to think, they would get up and leave. It would serve us well every once in a while to stop and ask ourselves “what am I building—what good is it—how long will it last—is the path I am walking a highway that leads somewhere — somewhere im portant, or is it just a treadmill?” There is a passage in the Bible that has helped me a great deal in pointing to a meaningful life. Let me share it with you. It is Luke 2:41-52. It is the story of an inci dent that took place when Jesus was about boy scout age. His parents had taken Him to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. They had celebrated the feast and were returning home, thinking that Jesus was somewhere in the company, with some of the
cousins, or playingwith friends from the home town. But they found after a day’s journey that Jesus was not in the crowd, so Mary and Joseph had to return to Jerusalem and search for Him there. They found Him after three days, we are told, in the Temple, talking with the great teachers of His day, asking them questions and giving them an swers which surprised them. When His mother asked Him why He had stayed in the Temple He didn’t understand why she should expect Him to be anywhere else. “Did you not expect Me to be about my Fa ther’s business?” He said. Then He went back home and was subject to His parents, living with them for another 18 years until He began His public ministry. There are several things that this story points out which are impor tant to me and I trust to you also. One of these things is that there is a tremendous danger in making false assumptions. In the case of Mary and Joseph they assumed that Jesus was in the company, not bothering to check, not stopping to ask questions, just supposing that He would be there. In your case and mine, we may falsely assume
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THE K IN G 'S BU SINESS
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