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[[topics_collection_iv|| Topics Collection iv ]]
======True life ...======
Thursday, Oct 25, 2012. Talking about truth, we need to stay with the
term "true life" for a little bit. What is it, that determines "true life"?
Is it a reasonable concept to talk about it at all? I want to talk a little
bit about daily needs, frustration and how it links into true life ...
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**Daily frustrations and true life ...**
How are you dealing with all those daily frustrations of your job and
of your family? Perhaps you say it is all fine? I guess then you are a little
too much in marketing mode. Life can be frustrating, and as far as I can
judge all of us have these frustrating moments, where we just want to stop
operating. Does this have to do with true life? The term refers to a counter
point, to a different experience, to something which can help us and can
change our situation.
We first need to be a little more concrete with the frustration. Some of us
are frustrated in our job. Perhaps we put a lot of effort into a big grant
application or into an offer for a customer, and we just missed it. Now we are
there with nothing, no grant or no contract, and all our effort seems like
a big waste of time. We ask ourselves: was that worth doing it? Where is life
here, not just waste of life? Where is true life, which is exciting and
motivating and where effort gets at least some reward?
I know these moments quite well. If you set yourself challenging targets, you
will also loose sometimes. If you never loose, you did not go for challenging
things and then everything is boring anyway. Risk is a necessary part of life.
But I also found that I need what I would call "true life" in all of this.
I need a life full of purpose, full of friendship, full of reward which is given
on various levels of my existence. And just from a practical point of view
I have learned to carry out things in a way that they are rewarding independently
of the outcome of a particular application or task.
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Life with him ...
For me, faith plays a central role for true life. God is there, and he is giving
me purpose, friendship and reward all the time. When he is guiding my life, he
helps me to see the purpose in the tasks, and to find the value in the different
activities. He is guiding and leading me, showing me why and how he wants me
to do things (indeed a good part of
this is taking place in bible study and prayer sessions). And his power
is large enough to generate something useful out of every single step I do. That
is just the contrary of the frustration experience. I do a step, following him,
and he makes something useful out of it. Isn't that great? It is more than great,
it is fantastic, brilliant, breathtaking ...!
True life is life with him. If he is there, things are different! That is a simple
statement, but it is what the bible tells us all the time, and what is the
coherent experience of my own faith life over more than two decades.
True life then has a very dynamic component. He is changing things, day by day. He
is giving input into our life, is creative, opens possibilities which we could
never dream of or think about. God, the God who created nature and all the
fantastic life forms we know, is still as powerful and creative as he used to be.
True life here becomes creative life, a life full of new possibilities ...
(Roland Potthast)
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