What Would You Do If You Had Only Seven ____ to Live?

What would you do if you had only seven seconds, seven minutes, seven hours, seven days, seven weeks, or seven years to live? Ponder with me a bit about those seven sevens and what you would say or do. 

If you had only seven seconds left to live, there wouldn’t be time to do much of anything other than say or scribble a final goodbye to the person(s) closest to you. More than anything, I would want to say to my beloved wife of 66 years, “Goodbye, June, I love you.”

If you had seven minutes to live, you could reach out to more people to share final words of love and appreciation—and perhaps even to apologize to some.

In addition to June, I would want to speak or write some words of love and appreciation to my four children and seven grandchildren. (Could I get that much done in just seven minutes?)

If you had seven hours of life left, there would be so much more you could say and do—and you might even want to spend some time resting, enjoying beautiful music and/or peaceful images. As for me, I would also want to spend some time talking about spiritual matters with family and friends.

If you knew you were going to live seven days more, that would seem like a lot of time (168 hours!) compared to seven hours. You might want to think through your will and maybe make some changes. There might even be time to do some small things on your uncompleted bucket list.

If I knew I had only a week left to live, in addition to seeking to write final and meaningful words to share with all my family and friends, I would also want to make some major gifts to charitable causes, knowing that my savings were not going to be needed for long-term health care or assisted living facilities.

Seven weeks of remaining life would mean 49 days, and certainly much could be done in that length of time. If you are still employed, how long would you keep on working?

Many who are still working would doubtlessly continue for much of this time. Most likely, there would still be bills to pay. Some say that we should live each day as if it is going to be our last. But no one can really live that way. Who would go to work if it were really going to be their last day?

If you had seven months of life left, compared to the sevens above, that seems like quite a long time. Most would likely continue living much as they are now.

Those who could afford it would perhaps use much of that time near the end to visit family members and friends who live at some distance, and perhaps they would also try to visit some of the places that they had always wanted to see, or to see again.

But wouldn’t you also seek to be involved in some service activities, using some of your remaining time and energy for the benefit of other people?

Seven years, compared to the sevens above, seems like quite a long time. And some of us might well expect that perhaps we have only about seven years (or less) remaining. In seven years (on Dec. 20, 2030), I’ll be exactly the same age as my father was when he died at the age of 92.

I thought a lot about these matters while reading Mike Graves’s new book Jesus’ Vision for Your One Wild and Precious Life, which I highly recommend.** Mike's point is that Jesus’ message to us is not just about life after death, but how to live meaningfully and joyfully now.

Graves cites the striking words of E.B. White: “I arise in the morning torn by a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day” (p.77).

If we knew we had only seven—or even 27—years left to live, despite the challenge of planning each day, shouldn’t we seek to live our “one wild and precious life” seeking both to save and savor the world?

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** I have written a review of this book for The Englewood Review of Books, which will be posted on their website in a few weeks. For you who read this blog post, I have posted that review (here) for you to read, if you are interested, as I hope you are.

Who Are “My People”?

It has now been nearly six weeks since the horrific rocket attacks by Hamas on the nation of Israel and then the beginning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza. There has been extensive death and destruction already, and there is no telling how long it will be before the violence comes to an end.

I have been grieving over this “war” from the beginning and finally decided to write this article, reflecting on the words “my people” and considering who are often, and who should be, designated by those words. 

Are contemporary Israelis God’s people? I have serious concerns about the primary stance of the U.S. government in relation to the current deadly conflict in Israel/Gaza, but I am dealing here primarily with religious rather than political aspects of this grave situation.

Online posts by conservative evangelical Christians, including some of my Facebook “friends,” indicate overwhelming support for the current nation of Israel, whose citizens are perceived to be God’s people just as the Israelites in Old Testament times were.

It is true that in the Old Testament God calls the Israelites “my people” over 200 times, and the words “my people Israel” appear over 30 times.

In Exodus 19:5-6, God says that the Israelites, who are being led to the “promised land” by Moses, “will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples” and that they “will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation.”

Drawing from those words, I Peter 2:9 in the New Testament declares that now it is the Jesus-followers who “are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are God’s own possession” (CEB).

Partly on the basis of this highly significant verse, I believe God’s people today are not only, or primarily, the Jewish citizens of the modern nation of Israel or the Jews as an ethnic group.

And I am quite certain that the citizens of the nation of Israel today are not by any means the same as the Israelites whom God called “my people” in the Old Testament.

What does it mean for a Jewish rabbi to stand with “my people”? Recently, I had the opportunity to hear a local Jewish rabbi speak about the challenge that he and his congregation are facing at the present time.

There was, naturally, some reference made to the deplorable antisemitism that has increased in the U.S. since 10/7, which now has a very negative meaning to so many Jewish people as does 9/11 to most USAmericans.

At the end of his talk, the rabbi said, and repeated, “As for now, I stand with my people.” I took those words to mean that he was going to stand with (=support) the Israel Defense Forces in their retaliatory attacks on Gaza.

But a Christian pastor who knows the rabbi quite well took it differently. She thought he meant that he was going to stand with the people of his Jewish congregation who are incensed because of the Hamas attacks on Israel and perhaps grieving the death or injury of friends and/or family members there.

Certainly, a Jewish rabbi as well as a Christian pastor—and perhaps a Muslim imam—should be expected to stand by his or her congregants in times of stress, anxiety, and even anger.

Who should you and I consider to be “my people”? “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it (Psalm 24:1, NIV) is another single verse from the Bible that is crucially significant.

God may have called some people to a special task and referred to them as “my people.” But most broadly, shouldn’t all the inhabitants of the world be recognized as God’s people?

As Creator of “the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), God surely sees all ethnic groups, adherents of all religions, and even all segments of society who have no religious faith of any kind as “my people.”

If we are God-believers, shouldn’t we be able to see that all eight billion people in this world are “my people”—God’s and ours—and seek to work tirelessly for the welfare of all, including the peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians? 

Remembering Martin Buber and the Importance of Dialogue

My previous blog post was about a contemporary Jewish woman who is an atheist. This post is about Martin Buber. a historical Jewish man who stressed the importance of dialogue between people and of the encounter with God, the basis of his philosophical thought and writings. 

Martin Buber was born in 1878 (145 years ago) to an Orthodox Jewish couple in Vienna. From 1881~92, he was raised by his grandfather in what is now Lviv, Ukraine. In 1899, while studying philosophy in Zürich, he met Paula Winkler, who was a Catholic, and they married in 1901.

Martin and Paula, who converted to Judaism, worked as a couple in the Zionist movement. Unlike most Zionists, though, the Bubers believed that that movement should focus on fostering cooperation between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and they envisioned a binational state where both could coexist in harmony.

Buber was a prolific author, and Ich und Du, his best-known and most influential book, was published 100 years ago (in 1923). It was first translated into English in 1937 and issued under the title I and Thou.

A central emphasis of Buber’s book is the difference between the word pairs “I-It” and “I-Thou.” His philosophy centered on the encounter, or dialogue, of people with other human beings through relationships, which ultimately rest on and point to a relationship with God, “the eternal Thou.”

In 1938, when he was 60, Buber moved to Jerusalem where he resided until he died in 1965.

“I-It” is the primary stance of modern science. As Buber states in I and Thou, “the basic word I-It” is “the word of separation.”**

In the I-It realm, the natural world and everything in it is seen as something to be observed, examined, categorized. It is completely related to in an objective manner. Other humans, too, are often seen objectively. In that way, they, like natural phenomena, are experienced but not encountered.

When the physical world is considered an It, it can be used and manipulated for one’s own benefit without compunction. That, in fact, is one of the reasons for the ever-growing ecological crisis of the present time.

Unfortunately, when people are considered as Its, they too can easily be used, manipulated, and discriminated against without qualms. That is seen most clearly in the way enemies in warfare are always seen as Its who need to be destroyed.

“I-Thou” is primarily the stance of those who emphasize relationships and seek interaction with other people and even the natural world through subjective encounter rather than objective experience. 

The I-Thou (I-You) realm is one of dialogue, where there is mutual respect between people. Both the I and the You speak clearly and listen attentively, accepting both the uniqueness and the similarity of each other.

This I-Thou relationship can be enjoyed to a degree with even the non-human world, and that has been practiced by animistic religions such as that of traditional Native American peoples and of Shinto in Japan.

In the Handbook of Contemporary Animism (2013), Graham Harvey sees the animist perspective as similar to Buber's emphasis on "I-Thou." Animists relate to the world of animals, trees, and even inanimate objects in an I-Thou manner rather than in an I-It way.

And even in the present time, some modern environmentalists are called “tree-huggers” because of their desire to embrace an I-Thou relationship with the world of nature.

The distressing problem, however, is that modern industrial civilization and a world of eight billion people cannot be sustained by a worldview that relates to nature primarily in an I-Thou manner.

According to Buber, the basis of all I-Thou relationships is God, “the eternal Thou.” Through encounter with the eternal Thou, individuals are transformed and their understanding of the world and their place in it is fundamentally altered.

Buber believed that such encounter is essential to human flourishing and meaningful existence.

In my view, Buber was correct, indeed, and that is the reason I want us all to remember him and his emphasis on the importance of encounter with God and of having dialogue with other people.

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** The first (1937) English translation of Buber’s Ich und Du was by Ronald Gregor Smith. This citation is from Walter Kaufmann’s 1970 translation (p. 66 of the Kindle edition). At the beginning of that edition, Kaufmann has a helpful prologue of more than 40 pages. Buber’s book alone is only about 120 pages, but it is difficult reading and most of us need to read it more than once in order to fully grasp what he is saying.