“There are times … when suddenly, you realize you’re nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything – or if it made any difference at all, really. Particularly in comparison with other men …. I don’t know whether that kind of thinking’s very healthy, but I must admit I’ve had some thoughts on those lines … from time to time.”
Colonel Nicholson
The Bridge On The River Kwai
A friend once told me that bumper stickers are for people who’ll say something driving away from you that they’d never say standing in front of you.
Think of that often, during my daily 25-mile, twice-a-day commute, where the compressed wisdom, folly, and creativity of bumper stickers and personalized license plates abound. It came to me again the other day when, by the dawn’s early light, I saw on the car in front of me a plate that read: WHYAMI.
A little philosophical, as license plates go. Thinking on that, I realized it’s a phrase that comes up surprisingly often, in one form or another:
“Why am I so tired?”
“Why am I the last to know?”
“Why am I not invited?”
“Why am I listening to this?”
“Why am I the one who has to …?”
Wondered which of those might have prompted the driver of this particular car to dedicate his plate’s message-to-the-world to that question. Pulling past him, I glanced over to see a wiry, older man, hunched over the wheel, glasses clinging to the tip of his nose, looking for all the world like a fellow afraid he’d just missed his last turnoff.
Which made me wonder if WHYAMI might be, in his case, a more existential question.
It’s certainly one most of us stumble over, at some reflective moment in our lives. More often than not, it’s a moment of failure, disappointment, disillusionment. Life gives us pause, and – like Colonel Nicholson (above) – we begin to wonder. Like Hamlet pondering, “To be or not to be,” or George Bailey gazing down from the Bedford Falls bridge, we find ourselves mulling our small, passing place in the universe.
Have I made any real, lasting difference? If I did, is that done now? Is the thing I was meant to accomplish complete, and now ‘m just running out the clock? Or, if I haven’t yet left my mark, is it too late to do so? Am I moving in the right direction to do whatever will justify my existence?
Does the justification lie in, say, moral progress over a lifetime? Is it just about being more like Jesus than I used to be (uh-oh) … in being a little wiser, a little kinder, a little more patient?
Or is it less the sum of all parts than, maybe – a moment? A single act … a crucial conversation … one critical instance when the good Lord needed me to be at some particular crossroads, for one particular person, to speak the word / give the nod / reach out the hand that would change … something. Or some things. Or everything.
Or does my life, in the end, even need justifying? My soul certainly needs saving, but maybe that’s different. Or, maybe it isn’t. Maybe the purpose of life is simply fellowship with the One who gave it to me. Perhaps knowing the Author is more important than knowing the plot.
The Psalmist seemed to think so (139:13-16):
For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.
Sometimes, I find my “fearfullys” easier to locate than my “wonderfullys.” But if I’m a book already written, well … the Lord is a marvelously skilled writer, and ‘m sure the climax won’t disappoint.
Paul had his moments of reflection, too, and he seems to have landed here (1 Corinthians 15:10):
“By the grace of God (the great ‘I AM’), I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.”
If my purpose is done – if my purpose is coming – if my purpose is ongoing – His grace is sufficient to bring the story to it’s right conclusion. I am nearer the end than the beginning. But mercifully, ‘m also nearer the Beginning than the end. Eternity, my mother liked to say, has already begun, for those whose life is in Jesus.
A little while after I passed WHYAMI that morning, I came upon another car bearing it’s own licensed commentary: NHSGRSP. The driver was leaning back, smiling, juggling a Tootsie Pop in his mouth. The rising sun glowed bright on his face.
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