Commentary: We celebrate life today and every day

What a tremendous blessing it is to be alive, to enjoy each new day, to experience health and peace and joy. In other words, to experience life. People often miss life in the living. The day-to-day becomes accepted, expected, ritualized. Then, as Joni Mitchell sang years ago, "You don't know what you've got til it's gone." What a wonder it is for these bodies of ours to constantly and consistently operate for years, decades, often with no interruption and little problem. As I get older, it seems more and more of the folks I talk with mention heart attacks, strokes and such they or their acquaintances have recently experienced. Life is a temporary and precarious thing. And each stage of life has its beginning and its end. Such thoughts come to me often – during a recent funeral I officiated, at a 40th birthday party we attended, and so on. We once were children but not anymore (perhaps still childish once in a while). We once were teenagers, but that stage is history. You may meet someone who seems to have gotten stuck somewhere in this stage and never grew out of it, although most of us move on into adulthood – young adulthood, adulthood, older adult and just plain old. Time marches on, and time waits for no one. Life happens whether you are ready for it or not. Life happens without your permission or control. This weekend, many of us will celebrate Easter and the new life it represents. When we speak about "life," we are not limiting ourselves merely to this physical existence. Life is a spiritual force that transcends the beating of our heart and the inflation of our lungs. Life is more than the electrical synapses of the brain. There's more to life than pulse, heart rate and oxygen level. These things keep the motor running and constitute living in the strictest physical definition. In John 11:25, Jesus declared, "I am the resurrection and the life." In John 14:6, He said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." And John 10:10 says, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." Yes, even "eternal life" (John 3:16) and "everlasting life" (John 4:14). In the meantime, author Jonathan Swift's advice comes in handy here, when he said, "May you live all the days of your life." Tom Rupp is a Folsom resident and weekly Telegraph columnist. You can reach him at truppfolsom@yahoo.com.