Life
So, will you be taking the "£400 blood test that tells you how long you will live"? (It measures telemores, on the tips of your chromosomes, in case you were wondering...)
The news of this "breakthrough" - which has opened an ethical Pandora's box that we won't begin to sift here - should certainly make us think. How would you live differently depending on whether you had 40 years left (barring accident) or four?
Given more time, would you waste more? Would you pay more generously into the pension pot? Would you set your sights higher in life?
If, instead, you found you had but a few years to bleed dry, would you leap out of bed to complete the 50 things we all must do? (I haven't even bungee jumped yet, let alone scuba-dived the Great Barrier Reef...) Would you feel short-changed, or panic-stricken?
Perhaps it shouldn't affect us as much as we think. One of the greatest challenges for Christian believers, after all, is to accept this day, of all days, as a rare and precious gift. For "this is the day that the Lord has made" - filled, to the brim of eternity, with promise, opportunity and challenge. We need no other.
St Irenaeus declared famously that "the glory of God is man [and woman] fully alive." Not "...hanging on for dear life", or even, "...waiting for life after death". Christian Aid, whose week it is this week, puts it so well: "We believe in life before death" - however long we have left, presumably.
If we believe the same, then our goal, surely, is to help reveal the glory of God in us, and through us, by demonstrating life to the full - prophetically, radically, counter-intuitively - in the here-and-now, as much as in the now-but-not-yet.
How can you, today, help to dream a different world into being, through who you are, as well as what you do - regardless of whether you have all the time in the world, or none?
How does God's glory flood through your veins? How was it written into your DNA, from the start - to be embedded in your rhythms and routines, embodied in the smallest acts, emblazoned in the grandest gestures...?
What does it look like, this life, this day - "on earth, as it is in heaven"? For isn't that the real test, after all?
Brian Draper
Brian Draper is author of Spiritual Intelligence. To find out more about his work, visit http://www.spiritualintelligence.co.uk/.
So worried about the results of this blood test i wasn't looking when i crossed the road to the surgery and got knocked down by the number 15 bus!
Date:
2011-05-20 10:04:42
Author:
Greg Smith