No Other Life but This

This week we begin a new series at Campbell, titled “No Other Life But This.” The phrase is Henry David Thoreau’s; the full quote is:

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

Because Thoreau may not be everyone’s first choice on which to base a worship series, and because the quote itself is open to different interpretations, I would like to share my thoughts as to the basis for this series.

We are going to spend a few weeks with the characters in the scriptural story of Esther, and watch to see how each lives fully “in the present” and finds the “eternity in each moment.” The characters in this story are presented with choices and challenges, and we’ll spend the next few weeks reflecting on how they do (or do not) understand that “there is no other life but this.”

So when I say “there is no other life but this,” I do not mean once we die, we die, and there is nothing other than this earthly life. Far from it.

This quote makes me think about the potential contained within each and every moment of our lives. Every instant is ripe with God-imbued possibility, ready for us to realize. God does indeed offer eternal life, but not as a separate life that begins after this one. The life God offers is possible right here and right now.

This series will allow us to see how the various characters in the story of Esther realize the possibility of their moments, and hopefully give us new insight into our own moments, and how we ourselves might find our eternity in each of them.

There is no other life but this!