They call it a bucket list, a conglomeration of items that one desires to accomplish before they leave this earth, before their final day of life. For the very young who are terminally ill, it has been given the name in many countries of the “Make-A-Wish” Foundation, but no matter the age or the circumstances, they are desires that have for one reason or another been set aside because the world and its callings have been more pressing, more important. They are desires that only become important when the finality of life is actually realized.
Human beings do not think as they should think, their minds are clouded by the temporal, by the here and now. “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” (Eccl. 1:14) For those who have these desires and cannot fulfill them because of the lack of financial wherewithal, they either become bitter, or set up a coping mechanism of denial within themselves, attempting, and at times succeeding, in making themselves believe that those desires are foolish, that a person should be satisfied with what they have, that “good enough is close enough.”
The born-again believer is no different in these areas, those who have the desire to go, see and do are limited in the same fashion, but those desires are tempered by the desire to serve the Lord first and foremost. Yet here we also find a subgroup, if you will, those who will suffer of their own making, believing that great pleasures and joys await them “on the other side.”
It does not prompt them to serve the Lord more fully here, but instead becomes in a sense their top priority bucket list item only because they refuse to see the joy of experiences that the Lord offers to them while they yet live. That tempering, that hardness of denial becomes within them a sense of self-piety, and they neglect the better in hopes of the best. A false contentment lives within them, while they continue to deny what is offered to them here.
We are not to be part of this world, (Romans 12:2) in fact, we are to hate it, (1 John 2:15) it is a worldly ideology that has invaded the mind of the Christian, one that states that working for money and the things that it can purchase is the fulness of life, until one reaches a certain age, an “age of retirement.” And then we can go, see and do, and it brings a person who has been blessed with wisdom the knowledge of the truth that in either case, fulfilling these worldly desires, or denying them for whatever reason, that all of life under the sun is vanity and vexation of Spirit. (Eccl. 1:14)
Fill the bucket list or don’t, nothing outside of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is going to satisfy a man in this life or the one to come. Satisfaction only comes from the knowledge that the life one lives is pleasing to the Lord God, that His will is being done in our lives.
The lockdowns and new, ever increasing mandatory laws that are being enacted across the planet are bringing with them depression, increased numbers of suicides, alcohol and drug abuse are on the rise exponentially, domestic abuse, anger, frustration and violence, as they were intended to do, all in the name of one who will repair everything, at least in those whose desires are still of the world, the antichrist.
“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8) There is your bucket list.
If the Lord offers you the opportunity for more, take it, and thank Him for those times, if not, “In your patience possess ye your souls.” (Luke 21:19), but do not compare your desires of this world with heaven, and do not deny them when they present themselves in a sense of self-sacrifice. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (James 1:17)
