Preview(S): Transformed...YOLO...well actually not really.

    In case you have never come across the phrase YOLO, it stands for "You Only Live Once".  I have heard it described as the proper red-neck/thug translation of "Carpe Diem".  Not that this matters, but my favorite professor in college had a huge poster on his wall of a carp that said "Carpe Diem: Seize the fish!" As poorly as that poster translated the Latin of carpe diem into English is about as poorly as YOLO translates the spirit of "seizing the day" into real life. Most often the YOLO appellation just serves as an excuse for a person who is about to do something very stupid. 

(Thank you for that insight Dwight.)  First of all the whole concept implies that life has to be lived all at once. Now, if you know me, you know that I believe in optimizing my use of time.  I value time above almost any other earthly resource and I do my best to make the most of every moment.  That does not mean that I randomly opt to take part in activities that are dangerous or unreasonable just to prove that I am seizing the day and living life to the fullest.  Sometimes "seizing the day" means acting with restraint and reasonable caution in order that you might actually have a tomorrow. After all, hopefully I will live some tomorrow, just as I lived today, just as I hope to be living in a few decades so, there's time sufficient to be prudent.  Even if there isn't any time and I really may die tomorrow speeding that outcome by being reckless isn't really wise, and I would rather spend my time living wisely. 

    Part of living wisely includes recognizing that I am not the

source of life, I am just the wise fool using it up. My life comes from God and my hope is built on the notion that all the death I pile up in my life (because what is the failure of sin but the very essence of death) can only be overcome by God...and that God is willing and desirous to do so.  My hope is built on the notion that I live more than once, and that through the cross I am promised to live again.  God says to to the prophet Ezekiel (who had the weirdest prophetic visions in the whole Bible) after Ezekiel sees a horde of dry skeletons brought back to life...

Ezekiel 37:12-14  Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act," says the LORD.

    Now before you get worried about an army of Israelite Zombies rising up out of the graves in the Middle East please note that God here is speaking metaphorically about granting his people new life. You see, you really don't OnlyLiveOnce any more than we OnlyDieOnce.  We die a bit every day.  In fact sometimes our lives become so dry and empty that we can die entirely even though our hearts still beat, our lungs still inhale, we still go to work, take out the trash, and feed the dog...but feel hopelessly dead inside.  If you find yourself feeling that way, first of all don't despair: you are not alone.  This feeling of being dead though we live is not new, unique, or hopeless.  People have been suffering from this from the first day we left the Garden of Eden.  Death that finds our spirit before our flesh is the very nature of sin that infests our lives.  There is a solution. Jesus has made a way for us. St. Paul says to the people in Rome:

Romans 8:9-11: But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.  But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

In case Paul's logic there was too circular for you: what he is saying

Is it me, or does this Jesus look shockingly
like a young Lee Majors?

is that even though this world may try to crush our spirit, even though things may happen...even things we are responsible for...that leave us feeling dead inside, have hope. Just as the Spirit could raise Jesus from the dead it can raise our spirit up to overcome that death that comes to the still living. The fact that God lifted Jesus up from the dead proves to us how willing he is to raise us up. Having the hope that death can be defeated, both the kind that comes for us eventually and the kind that comes for us every day, is the first step to new life. When Jesus walked among us two thousand years ago he proved himself time and time again to be the enemy of death.  He brought healing to the sick, vision to the blind, and life to the dead.  In the Gospel of John Jesus demonstrates this with his friend Lazarus:

John 11:25-27, 38-44:  Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world." Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

I used to wonder why Jesus would bother with doing this.  It's not like Lazarus isn't going to die again anyway...eventually we all do. It isn't as though Lazarus, one of Jesus' closest friends and believers, isn't going to heaven.  Why bring him back? I used to assume that Jesus needed him for some important task, but the older I get the more sure I am that the reason was simply that Jesus was the very embodiment of life, and that life simply could not abide death. Not in Lazarus, not in us. It is Christ's nature to destroy death.  

YOLO? Hardly.  I live and die again and again. I trust God to always find a way to bring me new life.  I trust that when I leave this world and die one last time that there is new life planned for me in the resurrection that knows no end. Most importantly for the moment I trust that there is no death that others can impress on me, or that I can invite into my own life that God's power and grace cannot drive out. There is no dry valley of bones that my life can turn into that God's love cannot bring back.  There is no tomb-like existence that Jesus cannot roll the stone away from and set me free.  It is that hope that is built on that trust that gives me the strength to have faith that no matter what I am facing there is a way...Christ won't find the way...Christ IS the way.