Living Well

What does it mean to live well?

With “well” being my word of the year, I have been thinking about this question: what does it mean to live well? So of course, I was intrigued to find a book by a great author, Eugene Peterson, On Living Well, Brief Reflections on Wisdom for Walking in the Way of Jesus. Doesn’t just that subtitle say it all?

Each chapter contains gems of wisdom on different aspects of life on themes such as beginnings, simplicity, prayers, mercies and glories. Here are a few quotes that teach us how to live well:

“We ought to cultivate the skills that equips us to live in cheerful anticipation of what God will do tomorrow. Will we live anxiously complaining and querulous, because we don’t have all we want or because we don’t know what is coming next? Or will we live in confident joy, sure that God’s next move will be a good one? The expectant command is for us to rejoice.”

“God invites us to leap, to live, and to love: to leap from the visible uncertainties of self to the invisible certainties of faith, to live intensely instead of eagerly and dully, and to love directly and personally and not secondhand.
Each person, says the gospel is called to leap in faith, to live as his or her own authentic and personal being and to love perhaps for the first time intimately. Christ shows us in his own life how to do this in a way that does not require us to curb our own uniqueness, joy, or excellence. Rather it is expanded.”

“But here is the question: How do we live at our best when we don’t have to?”

“Worship centers our life. In worship we let God have the first word. We set the mood of days to come by practicing adoration and praise. We establish a sense of reality in which the ‘great invisibilities’ (God Christ, and Spirit) can be as fresh and present to us in daily life as our family members and workplaces and job lists.”

See what I mean about much wisdom in this book? I think this is the sort of book I will pick up again at a different point in my life and reread and different quotes will resonate.

But Peterson’s words do stir up the question for each of us to ponder what does it mean for us to answer: What does it mean to live a well lived life?

I know this in incomplete yet for me, but a life lived well has these elements:

• To love and obey God.
• To be faithful and to trust.
• To be grateful.
• To pay attention.
• To be kind.
• To be open.
• To love justice.
• To be light.
• To use the gifts God has given me for God’s purpose.

“In the end, it doesn’t matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished—a life without a heart is not worth living.” John Eldredge

What would you add to this discussion about a living well?