“But this is what I’m saying, friends: time is limited. And so, let those who are married live like they aren’t; let the mourning live like they aren’t in mourning; let the joyful live like they aren’t joyful; let the shoppers live like they have nothing; let those who deal with the world live like they aren’t preoccupied with it. Because, what you see all around you is disappearing” (1 Corinthians 7:29-31).
How do we live when it seems the world is ending?
Give it all up. Walk away from your family, don’t waste time mourning, stop being preoccupied with the needs of this world. That what Paul appears to say.
And, surely, he has a point, right? Didn’t Jesus say to let the dead bury their own dead? If we see everything around us as temporal, mortal, and whose time is short shouldn’t we refrain from holding onto it? Shouldn’t we who know that Christ is coming to make all things new remain unattached?
Unless, of course, we’re reading Paul all wrong.
Today is my wife’s birthday (Happy Birthday, my love). We’ll have cupcakes and champagne and presents to celebrate this beginning to another year of her life. If I read Paul’s words as we so often have, I wouldn’t do any of this. I wouldn’t have bothered with presents or food or balloons. I would have let this day pass as any other on the way to the end of time. Our marriage and her life are temporal things, after all, and wouldn’t clinging to them and her just leave us both unprepared for the changes that are coming?
But that’s just it, her life and the life we share just as the love and relationship we have with family and friends are temporary things. Death and distance can swipe them away from us in a moment’s notice. And that’s where it’s imperative that we understand what it is to live “like.”
Think for a moment, what does it mean to live like you aren’t in a relationship with someone? Does it mean to act as though they aren’t special to you, as though your life wouldn’t be poorer because of their absence? Or does it mean to live as though we know just how great and fragile a gift it is to have them in our lives?
Living “like” isn’t acting as if the relationship doesn’t exist but keeping close to our hearts how miraculous it is that we have them in our lives. To those who are married it means remembering every single day that you are blessed beyond expression to have this person beside you. To the mourning, it means to remember how precious it is to feel the emptiness left by someone who you loved so much.
Rather than a call to separation, to distancing ourselves from those around us and the Creation that fills our world, Paul is telling us that in these perilous times to look and to notice the gift of love all around us. He is reminding us that everything in this world is temporary, limited in its time. And when we remember those limits, we cannot help but hold those we love closer, cherish each moment with them, taste every bittersweet tear we cry when they are gone.
Because, this is how we live when the world is ending.
Holy One, one day is as a thousand years to you, and a thousand years as one day. This day, help us remember how precious every moment is with those we love and this world you cherish. Keep in our minds how brief our time is in this world that is passing away; so, we might live as though this world is ending.