The examined life

Have you noticed our tendency to rush? To live our lives at full throttle, rarely stopping long enough to take a breath or to take stock of where we are?

This is the type of lifestyle that gets people to the end of their lives full of regret because by the time they were still long enough to consider how they’d live, they had very little time to live differently.

Socrates has been credited with sayin that the unexamined life is not worth living. I’m thinking that perhaps he had read Lamentations 3:40, which presents an alternative to the unexamined life. The prophet Jeremiah wrote:

“Instead (of complaining about how our lives turned out), let us test and examine our ways. Let us turn back to the Lord.” Lamentations‬ ‭3:40‬ (emphasis mine)

In other words, don’t wait until the end of your life to figure out that the way you were living took you in the wrong direction full the full duration. Learn to examine your life, test the way you’re living. The original word for examine carries the same meaning as dig. It’s work to consider, but a little course correction along the way keeps us from being way off at the end of the course.

Today is the last day of the first month of the new year, and it’s a perfect time to stop and ask yourself how you’re doing? What progress have you made toward the plans that you made? Do you need to change the plan?

Take time today to examine your life, your goals, and your progress, and then make the necessary correction. Perhaps, as Jeremiah encouraged, your first correction needs to be turning back to the Lord and trusting Him with your plans.

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