Читать книгу How To Be Here - Rob Bell - Страница 6

Do you see your life as something you create?

Or do you see your life as something that is happening to you?

The blinking line raises a compelling question: What are we here for?

For many people, the world is already created.

It’s a fixed, static reality—set in place, previously established, done. Or to say it another way: finished.

Which usually leads to the question: What’s the point of any of this?

But when we’re facing the blinking line and we talk about bringing something new into existence, we’re expressing a different view of the world, one in which the world is unfinished.

There’s an ancient poem about this unfinished world we call home. In this poem there are stars and fish and earth and birds and animals and oceans, and they’re all in the endless process of becoming. It’s not just a tree, it’s a tree that produces fruit that contains seeds that will eventually grow new trees that will produce new fruit that contains more seeds to make more new trees. It’s a world exploding with life and beauty and complexity and diversity, all of it making more, becoming and evolving in such a way that tomorrow will be different from today because it’s all headed somewhere. Nothing is set in stone or static here; the whole thing is in motion, flush with vitality and pulsing with creative energy. (This poem, by the way, is the first chapter of the Bible, in case any of this is starting to sound familiar.)

And then, right there in the middle of all of this unfinished creation, the poet tells us about a man and a woman. The man’s name is Adam, which means The Human in the original Hebrew language. It’s not a common name like you and I have, it’s more like a generic description. Same with the woman, whose name is Eve, which means Source of Life or Mother of the Living.

They find themselves in the midst of this big, beautiful, exotic, heartbreaking, mysterious, endlessly becoming, unfinished world and they’re essentially told,

Do something with it!

Make something!

Take it somewhere!

Enjoy it!

The poet wants us to know that God is looking for partners, people to help co-create the world. To turn this story into a debate about whether or not Adam and Eve were real people or to read this poem as a science textbook is to miss the provocative, pointed, loaded questions that the poem asks:

What will Adam and Eve do with this extraordinary opportunity?

What kind of world will they help make?

Where will they take it?

What will they do with all this creative power they’ve been given?

It’s a poem about them, but it asks questions about all of us:

What will we make of our lives?

What will we do with our energies?

What kind of world will we create?

Which leads to the penetrating question for every one of us—including you:

What will you do with your blinking line?