Fifty-one
years ago, when I graduated from high school, I used a passage from Macbeth as
the jumping off point for my graduation speech.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the
stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
I used this passage,
because it demonstrated such a contrast to what I believed about life then, and
it still does today after 50+ more years of life. I have pondered it again recently, because two
students I am tutoring are reading Macbeth.
How did Macbeth
arrive at this point of bitterness and despair?
My answer is that he accepted no moral absolutes and believed that he
could manipulate events to achieve his destiny.
He was unwilling to leave his future in the hands of either God or
fate. I know some people like that! They may not be murderers, as Macbeth was,
but they certainly do try to manipulate outcomes and do not concern themselves
with what is “right” or “wrong” in the process.
The solution
is to:
1.
Agree
with God about what constitutes right and wrong.
2.
Acknowledge that it is impossible to be “good”
on one’s own.
3.
Believe in the redemption offered through the
death of Christ.
4.
Put the future in God’s hands.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge him,
And he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3: 5-6 (NIV)
This does
not guarantee smooth sailing in life. If
my future had been revealed to me on that graduation day, I would have been
sure there was some mistake. “Hey, that
can’t be my life….you’ve got me mixed up with someone else!”
But, what
this approach to life does is to give one a means of dealing with both the
agony and the ecstasy. It removes a
great burden of anxiety over the future.
It is still OK to have long term and short term goals, and to make
plans, but it is done without attempts at manipulation of people and events. It avoids the temptation to rage when
circumstances don’t fall into place in the desired fashion.
Life is not
meant to be “a tale told by an idiot.”
I am come that they may have life, and have
it to the full. Jesus Christ in John
10:10
