Daily Encouragement: Day 232

From Handbook to Wisdom, Day 232

SEIZE THE MOMENT

Everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
for it is light that makes everything visible.
For this reason it says, “Awake, you who sleep;
arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
(Ephesians 5:13–14)

Blessed are the dead who die
in the Lord from now on.
They will rest from their labor,
for their works will follow them.
(Revelation 14:13)

In the film Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams plays an English teacher in a private school who makes a dramatic attempt at the near-impossible task of communicating the brevity of life to a group of adolescents. He gathers the students before an old trophy case and invites them to look closely at the faces of an earlier class that graduated some 70 or 80 years before. As the camera slowly pans in to a close-up of the faces in the photograph, we see all the hope and ambition of youth in their eyes and smiles. In the voice-over, Williams tells his students that the people in the photo were just like them, but now they are pushing up daisies. He exhorts them to seize the moment—carpe diem!

The better we understand the brevity of our earthly sojourn, the more we will treasure our opportunities, knowing that what we do in this life echoes in eternity.