40 day journey: it's time to party

A man named Mike Yaconelli wrote a short essay called "IT'S TIME TO PARTY." Here are a few excerpts:

It doesn't take much to make most of us realize that we have become too serious, too tense, too stressful. The result is that we have forgotten how to live life. It seems like the older we get, the more difficult it is for us to enjoy living.

It reminds me of a description of life given by Rabbi Edward Cohn: "Life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time, all your weekends, and what do you get in the end of it?"

I think that the life cycle is all backward.

You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live twenty years in an old-age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement.

You go to college; you party until you're ready for high school; you go to grade school; you become a little kid; you play. You have no responsibilities. You become a little baby; you go back into the womb; you spend your last months floating; and you finish up as a gleam in somebody's eye.

It's hard to imagine we were a gleam in someone's eye once.

What happened to the gleam in our eye?

What happened to that joyful, crazy, spontaneous, fun-loving spirit we once had? The childlikeness in all of us gets snuffed out over the years... .

The sign that Jesus is in our hearts, the evidence of the truth of the gospel is... we still have a light on in our souls. We still have a gleam in our eye. We are alive, never boring, always playful, exhibiting in our everydayness the "spunk" of the spirit.

The light in our souls is not some pietistic somberness, it is the spontaneous, unpredictable love of life...

I believe it's time for the party to begin.

As you take part in the 40 Day Journey of Lent, are you finding that gleam in your eye?

(Note: This post was automatically scheduled... because I'm on vacation)