The Bucket List

I’m 48 years old, 49 in a couple of months. Among many in my church I’m still young. Among many in the church plants around me I’m old. Some have commented that I’ve been in a mid-life crisis for a number of years already. Perhaps, I don’t know.

As I age I do realize that the years ahead of me are numbered. I’m in good health. Both of my parents are still in good health. My doctor isn’t concerned for me. Given the trajectory of increasing longevity for Americans with health insurance I could live to 100. That rosy forecast, however, says I’m half way through.

I’ve been in Sacramento 15 years this August. The time has flown. Every older person I speak with tells me it only gets faster. How to spend it?

I hear the term “bucket list” more frequently since the movie by the same name came out a number of years ago. The idea is simple. Write a list of the things you want to do before you kick the bucket. It seems what most folks put on their list are cool places to go, exciting things to do, wonderful experiences to pursue. Behind the bucket list is the older assumed, unchallenged conventional wisdom “you only live once.” If you believe that, the bucket list is a sensible, if also selfish, thing to pursue.

The Resurrection

My belief in the resurrection changes my bucket list. I could put mountains I wish to climb, countries I wish to visit, experiences I’d like to have on my list, and I certainly would like to do some more stuff, but I don’t think I’ll prioritize them. It seems to me that after the resurrection when I have a new body, a new creation, unencumbered by the crud that this one is filled with, a lot of the self-enjoyment items should probably be scheduled for the next world. If you can do some of these things today hampered by crime, cost, jetlag, selfishness, anxiety, inconvenience, why not postpone until the Isaiah 60 kings of the earth bring all of God’s cultural treasures to the feast? Most of the things on my bucket list today will look like an old black and white movie compared to what they will be in the new creation.

What Can’t Wait

What seems to me can’t wait until the new creation is the gospel proclamation in this world. I don’t want that phrasing to narrow your imagination of what I’m saying. It involves loving enemies, working through community, caring for the weak and the poor, helping the resurrection take shape in our minds and in our relationships today. Applying the kingdom to the myriad of vocations and callings within the challenges of the age of decay.  This cannot wait.

I don’t say so out of some harried anxiety and feared remorse. I’m too much of a Calvinist for that. I say it out of the confession that some of these practices place us in the trajectory of the resurrection even while in the age of decay. The kingdom trajectory sufferings with the age of decay actually enhance the future glory and pleasure of what is to come making this Christian life at once both cruciform and pleasurable. In these things we begin to taste the coming glory.

Sure, I want to see Europe and I don’t want to wait until Jesus comes, but I can. Numbering my days must be transformed by the resurrection if we are to be stewards of that number. The resurrection transforms our bucket lists, and gives the more resurrection sanity and joy.