Henry David Thoreau was an influential American writer, poet, naturalist, and philosopher of the mid-1800s. He was a close friend of poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, for a two-year span, chose an austere lifestyle at Walden Pond on Emerson’s Massachusetts property. Thoreau carefully recorded his experiences and thoughts of that period, from which came his most famous work, “Walden.” One of his most arresting observations about that adventure in basic living was,
“I went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
So, Thoreau was looking for the essence (essential nature or reality) of life. He wanted to be a good student at the feet of life as his Teacher. Well, give the guy a little credit, because he spurned the way he saw others running through life without pausing to soak it up (stopping to smell the roses). But do you not fear that the poet aimed a little low?
You see, one does not apprehend the ESSENCE of life by looking only at the ongoing processes of biological life. (Solomon described that as life “under the sun.”) That is, there is life, then, there is LIFE, right? The philosopher intimately attached himself to what he observed and experienced around Walden Pond, thinking that, in so doing, he had discovered the most deliberate and purposeful way to live. No doubt, the guy lived a profoundly simple existence. But to consider it to be the supreme way to do life is, well, quite a stretch.
We who know Christ as Lord honor Him as both the Giver and Definer of life. All that is life, at every level. It was He Who said, “I am come that they may have life” (John 10:10) and “I am the..Life” (John 14:6). Is the Lord not here referring to the highest experience or form of life? Peter the apostle preached the crucified, resurrected Christ as “the Author of life” – Acts 3:15. (Yes, we know that the original for “Author” also is translated Prince or Lord. But Author seems to better suit the contrasts there highlighted by Peter.) You can add to this thought from your time in the Book. I just wanted to take too long to say that in Christ Jesus and only in Him is the essence of life to be discovered and enjoyed. Whether here or hereafter.
Thoreau the author read the wrong book if he expected to really discover the essence of life, ultimate life. He was sitting at the feet of nature when he needed to be seated at the feet of the Author of Life. The philosopher went to the woods to live deliberately, so that he would not die feeling that he missed the very meaning of life. Well, how do we think that worked out? Now, with that in mind, how deliberately are we going about life? And, where are we looking for its ultimate meaning? Must we also die, only to discover that we had not lived? Of course not! You see, this really is not about Mr. Thoreau, is it?!
There is more to this, don’t you think?.
robert
