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How do we measure our lives? Do we measure it in years? Months? Days?
It seems to me that the fundamental unit of our lives is not accurately measured by a scientific unit. I say that the fundamental unit of human life is the moment. We cannot live our lives by the year, month, or day; we can only live one moment at a time.
Moment by moment, decision by decision...
It is the sum of those decisions we make every moment of every day that defines who we are.
How do we make those decisions? We cannot hope to have a pre-planned response to every situation presented to us; instead we rely on our values to provide us with our response. Arturo Perez-Riverte, a modem fencing master said "You have to cling to a set of values that do not depreciate over time; everything else is the fashion of the moment, fleeting, mutable. In other words, nonsense." What values, do you cling to? Honesty, justice,
integrity, charity? As a Christian I am called foremost to practice charity.
Charity is defined as love directed first toward God, but also toward oneself and one's neighbors. Those that practice charity in everyday situations are kind; those who continue to practice charity in extreme situations, regardless of the consequences, are heroes.
Who here has heard of Chiune Sugihara? I did not know about him either until a couple weeks ago. Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat stationed in Lithuania during world war two. Thousands of desperate refugees came to his consulate after others had turned them away. Instead of turning them away, and against the orders of his government, he issued them visas, allowing them and their family's to leave before the Nazis exterminated them. Sugihara did this at risk not only his own life but the lives of his wife, and two small children. He did not do this out of heroics, though it was, but because it was the right thing to do. True charity is not easy, nor is it usually recognized or rewarded. Sugihara later resigned his post at the Japanese government's request, and was imprisoned for eighteen months before being allowed to return home. When asked why he did this he said "I did what is right because it was right." Shortly before death he was honored by the Israeli government with the title "Righteous among Nations." Still, his neighbors did not know what he had
done until after his death in 1986 when Jewish people from around the world, including the Israeli ambassador to Japan, showed up for his funeral. When the moment of decision came he quickly chose to do the charitable thing.
As First Corinthians chapter 13 says:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
I think charity is the most fundamental virtue that we should base our lives on, as without it all other virtues and talents are meaningless.
Despite the uncertain and, at times, overwhelming nature of the future, remember that you can only live one moment at a time. When our moments of decision come. may we do what is right because it is right, and may we choose charity. As the writer Maria Edgeworth said "If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves."
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