Things you'll never say

I sometimes run a little thought experiment with myself. It goes like this:

You get to the Pearly Gates of heaven and St. Peter gives you a chance to look back over your life. He encourages you to particularly note those things you are glad you did, as well as the things you wish you hadn't done. And this exercise is not so much about the single events in your life so much as the patterns of your life. He wants you to think about how you devoted the hours of your life to habits and activities, day in and day out.

Asking myself that was one of the reasons I decided to stop watching television earlier this year. As I wrote in a previous post, my wife and I have given up TV. Not that television is inherently bad, mind you. But when you think of all the more productive things you could do with your time, it is a shame that so many of us allow our lives to be taken up by staring into that screen. For the most part, we've been very happy with our decision. It has allowed us to do a little bit of what John Wesley called "redeeming the time" (though he was talking about waking up earlier each day!).

I sometimes think about this kind of reflection by asking myself, "What are the things you would never, ever say to St. Peter?" As in, I would never look back over my life and say, "Gee, I wish I had watched more TV." Or, "Man, I wish I had argued with my wife more." Or, "You know, I wish I had spent more time worrying about material things."

It reminds me of a line from George Eliot's novel, Adam Bede. I listened to an unabridged audio version of this wonderful book a few years ago, so I know I won't get the quote exactly right. But at the end of one of the chapters, Eliot writes something to the effect, "When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity."

Isn't that great? To me, it says everything about how we choose to go about spending the precious time that we have in this life.

John Howard Yoder has a profound statement in his book, The Original Revolution, where he writes, "We are not marching to Zion because we think that by our own momentum we can get there. But that is still where we are going. We are marching to Zion because, when God lets down from heaven the new Jerusalem prepared for us, we want to be the kind of persons and the kind of community that will not feel strange there."

That statement by Yoder comes in the context of a book on pacifism, and he is referring to the calling to live a nonviolent life. We might also think about how it relates to the more mundane, day-to-day decisions about how we live our lives. If, as Christians, we are called to live in a way that anticipates our lives in the kingdom of God, then it matters a great deal how we spend the hours of our day. We ought to want to live as the kind of people whose commitments of time and talent are holy, meaning that they are oriented towards the love we know in Jesus Christ.

For most of us, today will look a lot like yesterday. We live in the same house, drive to the same places, and do many of the same things. Our lives tend toward the routine. And since that's the case, it means that what makes up the routine is of a great deal of importance. Are you spending the hours of your life doing things you'll later regret?

And if you look back on your life from the perspective of the Pearly Gates, considering all the things you've done and the things you've left undone, will you find that you devoted a huge chunk of your time to habits and activities that could have been used to a much greater purpose?