THE TRAGEDY OF NEGLECTING WHAT MATTERS MOST (3 OF 8)
Scripture: Haggai 1:9-11
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The Tragedy of Neglecting What Matters Most (3 of 8)
Series: Getting Back to What Matters Most
Wyman Richardson
Haggai 1:9-11
Read Haggai 1:9-11
One of the most profound reflections on death I have ever read is Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. As Ivan lay dying, he thinks about his life. As he does so it occurs to him that he has not lived his life well, that he has chased after things that do not matter, and that, in fact, his life was squandered. Here is how Tolstoy unfolds Ilyich's thoughts on his life:
It occurred to him [Ivan Ilyich] that what had seemed utterly inconceivable before-that he had not lived the kind of life he should have-might in fact be true. It occurred to him that those scarcely perceptible impulses of his to protest what people of high rank considered good, vague impulses which he had always suppressed, might have been precisely what mattered, and all the rest not been the real thing. His official duties, his manner of life, his family, the values adhered to by people in society and in his profession-all these might not have been the real thing. He tried to come up with a defense of these things and suddenly became aware of the insubstantiality of them all. And there was nothing left to defend.
''But if that is the case,'' he asked himself, ''and I am taking leave of life with the awareness that I squandered all I was given and have no possibility of rectifying matters-what then?'' He lay on his back and began to review his whole life in an entirely different light.
When, in the morning, he saw first the footman, then his wife, then his daughter, and then the doctor, their every gesture, their every word, confirmed the horrible truth revealed to him during the night. In them he saw himself, all he had lived by, saw clearly that all this was not the real thing but a dreadful, enormous deception that shut out both life and death. This awareness intensified his physical sufferings, magnified them tenfold. He moaned an ...
Series: Getting Back to What Matters Most
Wyman Richardson
Haggai 1:9-11
Read Haggai 1:9-11
One of the most profound reflections on death I have ever read is Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. As Ivan lay dying, he thinks about his life. As he does so it occurs to him that he has not lived his life well, that he has chased after things that do not matter, and that, in fact, his life was squandered. Here is how Tolstoy unfolds Ilyich's thoughts on his life:
It occurred to him [Ivan Ilyich] that what had seemed utterly inconceivable before-that he had not lived the kind of life he should have-might in fact be true. It occurred to him that those scarcely perceptible impulses of his to protest what people of high rank considered good, vague impulses which he had always suppressed, might have been precisely what mattered, and all the rest not been the real thing. His official duties, his manner of life, his family, the values adhered to by people in society and in his profession-all these might not have been the real thing. He tried to come up with a defense of these things and suddenly became aware of the insubstantiality of them all. And there was nothing left to defend.
''But if that is the case,'' he asked himself, ''and I am taking leave of life with the awareness that I squandered all I was given and have no possibility of rectifying matters-what then?'' He lay on his back and began to review his whole life in an entirely different light.
When, in the morning, he saw first the footman, then his wife, then his daughter, and then the doctor, their every gesture, their every word, confirmed the horrible truth revealed to him during the night. In them he saw himself, all he had lived by, saw clearly that all this was not the real thing but a dreadful, enormous deception that shut out both life and death. This awareness intensified his physical sufferings, magnified them tenfold. He moaned an ...
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