By Mark Briggs
rom "sea to shining sea" is more than a line in the song "America the Beautiful." It describes a vastness and invokes awe relative to the beauty of our planet. America and the entire Earth, from "sea to shining sea," truly is wonderful!
You don’t have to wait until Christmas to declare, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” See and feel the waves as you stand in the warm, wet sand on a southern shore or breathe in the clean, crisp air spilling over a seven-thousand-year-old glacier in northern Montana. You might hear yourself saying, if only in an emphatic whisper—WONDERFUL!
David, the Hebrew King, poet, and songwriter, is credited with saying, “The heavens declare the handiwork of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Psalms 19:1)
There’s no need to bore you with rhetoric. If you’ve lived on this globe any time at all, you know this place is filled with wonder! You also understand that you had nothing to do with it. You do, however, play a stewardship role if this world is to remain a place of magnificence. More importantly, your wonderful life is predicated on much more than what you were given, but also on what you give and who you are as an individual.
This place is wonderful because of what God has created for our pleasure. Furthermore, its beauties are but representations of a deeper spiritual presence. Towering, jagged peaks, sweeping flower-flecked valleys, turquoise waters, and the beckoning song of a loon are all attractants from the source. To find that source is to find oneself. That discovery is essential to converting a wonderful place into “a wonderful life” to live.
A wonderful life is not about what you have but about who you are. Who you are is transmitted from whose you are. And that translates to an empowerment to do something, to give something away, to share your blessing by bearing someone’s burden, to listen more than you speak, and at times, carry something heavy even when it’s not your own.
Clarence, the Angel in the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life, said: “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
How deep would the “awful hole” be if you weren’t here? Would you be missed?
A wonderful life is making a bigger deposit than a withdrawal. The sum of life is the difference between what you’ve taken and what you’ve given. Although you can never truly give without receiving, a wonderful life is found in the attempt to do so.