On Life 1 – the Journey of Life – November, 21, 2013

   Life is a journey we go on in a time measured by our ages lives in which the one who thinks he lives, but the vapor of his life can evaporate without leaving any traces. While the life of others has become drops of dew gathered to make a river from which the whole world is watered. They say, “Age is the only thing that which decreases when it increases”. True, the minutes that pass from our life decrease our age.” but I see that there are lives the more they extend the more they become heavier on the balance of hearts. Robert Frost, the American poet, says,“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on”. Surely, life goes on, most importantly, the way it goes on. Life is the gift that God grants to all humans. He puts in their credit at “the Bank of Days”. So the one who invests in it should know its worth, so he trades andgains, while the one who loses it, spends it in vain, only standing at its doors following its footsteps never looking at his.

   He looks forward to the people around him and does not realize the signs of the road. So this does not add to him anything but hoariness.

   While others walked at its path, learned and realized some of its lessons. And few are those who walked, stumbled, yet stepped up again and learned, and their footsteps in life have become signs to follow for those who come after them. Truly, there is those who have gifted by life and other who gifted life. Thus, life has written about his days in its book as he offered it easy-trodden paths and lanterns that lightened the lives of his successors. Here we should stop and think about life, does life gift us, does it make us exhausted or rather we add more to it? Whatever the answers are, we are still alive, and this is a chance to live our lives to the full lest our life decay slowly. The little boy was astonished and curious while he put his father’s big watch on his ear and heard the sound of its tick tocks.

   And he looked at the clock and then put it on his ear trying to discover the mystery of the voice wondering: What is this sound emanating from the hour of my father?! When he could not find an answer, he asked his father faster. The little child was astonished when he put his father’s big watch on his ears. He kept looking at the watch trying to discover the secret of this sound saying, “what is this sound that goes out of my father’s watch?” When he finds no answer. He went to ask his father, “It is a moth that eats out our age” They say, “Life is a chance that only comes once to man”. So how we can we use it to the most. I once read a poem written by the English poet, “William Henry” speaking about life and how it is full of misery. Man should not wait for the good days to come but to make a good message out of his life that has its traces on people’s hearts, not only on time. Elia Abu Madi says in a creative and brief poetic line, “Life is not but what you imagine. You are life, its trace and its saying”. About life, we are to talk more in an valuable and sorrowful dialogue…

General Bishop

Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center