How many items have you crossed off your bucket list? What is the most important items on it? Do you even have a bucket list? Some of you may be asking, “What’s a bucket list?” The quick and easy answer is that your bucket list is the list of things you want to do or accomplish before you “kick the bucket,” so to speak. At bucketlist.org you can see what others have put on to theirs. The items are many and varied. Some are simple as riding a train or passionately kissing on the rain. Others are more difficult such as: visit Stonehenge, drive a race car on a racetrack, visit all 50 states, see the Great Wall of China, take a picture in front of the Taj Mahal, climb mount Everest, visit Disneyland, or float in the Dead Sea.
Wish lists or to-do lists have been around since the beginning of time. Such lists keep us on track from day to day as we go about the business of life. In contrast, the bucket list is the big one. The phrase became popular after the movie by the same name appeared in 2008. The film tells the story of two very different terminally ill lung cancer patients who became good friends while sharing a room in the hospital. One, a mechanic and family man, makes a list of things that he would like to do before he dies. But when told that he has only a year to live, he realizes that he can never fulfill it. The other, a wealthy tycoon, likes the list and insists that the two go together and do it all. He will pay all expenses. The unlikely couples go skydiving, take a safari, and visit some of the Seven Wonders of the World. From the top of the Great Pyramid they talk about the importance of their family relationships and relational successes and failures. The story illustrates that relationships are most important.
Yes, it is good to have plans, to work toward long-term goals, to make wish lists-even bucket lists. Without these kinds of targets, we will very likely hit exactly what we are aiming at-nothing. The world, the spirit of this age, urges the biggest adrenaline rush, the distraction for the moment, or food for selfish passions. I was interested to find this entry in bucketlist.org: “Stand at the feet of Christ the Redeemer.” Yes, definitely. But as I think about it, won’t we all stand at the feet of Jesus? Doing good or bad doesn’t seem to be the issue at that point. Seems to me there is just one item that needs to be on our list: Be known by Christ.
Lord, do You know me yet? Am I seeking You with that all-important undivided heart? Have I crossed everything else off my list in order to seek You first, last, and only?