Christian Life
The search for the meaning of life
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We can all certainly begin our search for the meaning of life with the simple truth that the first and greatest possession we have in life is life itself. But how do we view life and our own lives?
Life is short, life is fragile, and life is overshadowed by death in the end. You will die, I will die, and death mocks most of our current ideas and actions.
We humans, it seems, are the only life form that asks the question “why.” We are the only ones who can go back in time with memory and history, as well as forward in time with imagination and perspective.
Everything indicates that we are the only ones who have such a broad awareness of life that we can ask about the meaning of things. So it is not surprising that life poses us fundamental questions. The meaning of something can only be understood within the broader meaning of everything.
What do we live for?
How do we make the most of the life we have been given? To whom or what should we answer for our lives? What does it mean to live a life well lived?
If the search for meaning is often considered madness, we should ask what is crazier: to believe in meaning in the way we assume it every day, to search for its source and perhaps find it, or to dismiss the search itself as madness and resign ourselves to a life without any meaning?
The truth is that we humans are merchants of meaning.
Meaning is as natural to us as the air we breathe and the earth we walk on. Every word we speak, every act we perform, every plan we devise screams to us “meaning, meaning, meaning!”
Without meaning, both our everyday life moment by moment and our life taken as a whole would be worse than trivial. It would be worthless and useless. Where, how, or in whom can we find the meaning of life?
CS Lewis gives us the answer when he says: “I have discovered within myself desires which nothing on this earth can satisfy. The only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
The search for the meaning of life
You and I only find true meaning in life in God and in Jesus Christ, when life becomes a burden and meaning remember: “Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life and the meaning of life”.
