Measuring A Life
Wonderings, Fears, and Taking Stock
by Ken Rummer
Now in the seventh decade of my life, I wonder how I have done. Has my life been well-lived? Have I made the most of it? Has it mattered?
As a teenager, I had a Peanuts cartoon on my wall. Snoopy is resting/sleeping on top of his dog house and a thought bubble conveys his dilemma. “There is no heavier burden than a great potential.” I think I know how that feels.
And looking back I wonder. Have I lived up to the potential seen in my younger self? The vivid imagination? The academic quickness? The artistic eye? The musical bent? The listening ear? The talent to lead? The problem solving? The public speaking? The compassion? The writing? The heart for God?
If my life were a board for furniture making, I could step it off with dividers. I could check it for warp with winding sticks. I could test it with straight edge and try square. I could set down its dimensions in inches and fractions. But how am I to take the measure of my life?
Do I count the hours worked? The meetings chaired? The concerts performed? The number of sermons preached times the number of ears, divided by two?
Is lives touched a good measure? Or harm I could have done and wanted to do, but did not?
Should I try to count up the mistakes, the roads not taken, the hearts broken, the failures, the sins?
How do I assign a value to my children who now have children of their own? Or to my students who now have students of their own?
Where is the scale on which I could weigh the marriage we have built, my wife and I? The years together of loving and forgiving and growing and bearing with?
I’ve been told that it is difficult to do surgery on yourself. Life measuring may be like that. George Bailey couldn’t do it without the help of an angel-in-training and a Christmas movie. He thought his life a failure, not realizing the many ways he had left a mark on his family and community for the good.
Maybe I am feeling the anxiety that goes with being a person prone to fantasies of perfection. Wanting to ace life. Wanting a good grade at the end. Getting nervous before the final exam.
(Does anybody have an old copy of that test they might be willing to share, maybe in exchange for a pizza and 2 liters of soda?)
There’s a commendation in one of the stories of Jesus that goes like this: “Well done, good and faithful servant…Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:21 RSV) I have to say, I wouldn’t mind hearing that, at the end, when all is said and done. But who can say how my life will stack up when the final report is written?
As a pastor I sometimes heard the fears of people who saw the end of life coming on. They would confess, “I don’t know if I’ve been good enough.” Drawing on the faith traditions in our Reformed Protestant branch of the Christian family tree, I would try to reassure them that our confidence in heaven is based, not on our own goodness, but on the goodness of God. Eternal life comes to us as a present to be received.
And then, because that sounds too good to be true, I might find the place in the Bible I carried in a repurposed hearing aid case, and read where it says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9 NRSV)
Maybe that’s a word I need to hold on to, now, in retirement, in this taking-stock chapter of my life-so-far. Maybe it deserves a reminder on the mirror, a sticky note hand-lettered with a glitter marker. “My Efforts: An Offering. My Future: God’s Gift.”
Ken Rummer, a retired PCUSA pastor, writes about life and faith from the middle of Iowa by the High Trestle Trail.