How Short It Is

I finished Morgan's Run late Thursday night. Maybe I should say early Friday morning since it was almost 1:00 am when I closed the book.

Good book. Very good. I will be reading up on Botany Bay, the history of Australia, the nearby islands, and so forth. This book has piqued my interest in that time period.

That is my way.

I can't help it, though. Every time - every time I say, think or hear the words 'Botany Bay,' Pavel Chekov pops into my mind and I hear them in a quasi Russian accent. It seems that I have watched Star Trek, The Wrath of Khan too many times. Ha!

Once again, after I closed the book and have been mulling it over in my mind since, I am amazed at how much history I do not know. I am saddened by how many people have lived and died in total obscurity. I wonder at how many have lived horrible pain-filled lives, having no hope of anything better. I grieve at how many have never known the Truth of Jesus Christ.

And once again I am faced with just how short life really is.

So many lives have gone before us. So many that we will never know about until we reach heaven. And then, only if in the wisdom of God will we may possibly know and understand.

One of the other things that stands out to me in this book is just how deep man's inhumanity to man can be. We see it and hear about it all the time, every day, in bits and pieces, all around us - yes, this is true. But it is brought home to us in reality only when we face it ourselves, endure it ourselves - or - when we do so vicariously through the life of another in a book.

Movies are good at portraying some of this, but movies do not go into the mind of the person. We see with our eyes what is happening, but we do not feel it in the same way. In a well written book, I know the thoughts, the dreams, the hopes, the pleasures, the pain of a person. I myself am involved, not just the person on the screen before me. In many ways, watching a movie is similar to seeing a real person before me. Reading a book is being that person instead of myself.

I told my sister the other night that I was reading this book and she commented back(sorry, Heidie, I don't remember what you said exactly :) ). My response was - I have been all over the world, I have lived in every time period, I have traveled all over the cosmos.

I read. I read a wide variety of books. I have been Caesar. I have been a cowboy. I have been Cleopatra. I have been a prisoner on a convict ship (male and female both at different times) on the way to Botany Bay. I have settled a distant planet. I have explored the depths of the sea, the center of the earth, the prairies of North America, the tundra of Alaska. I have climbed Mount Everest, hacked my way through jungles, solved various crimes, fallen in love many times, watched those I love live and die. I read.

Oh, life is so short! There is so little time to live my own life as well as to live the lives of others, both real and fiction. One thing I have learned through reading - I want to live my life to the fullest.

I am so glad that life does not end with death, that I know I will live eternally. There is so much to know here on earth (and in space as well) - yet, the spiritual world is still totally obscure except for the glimpses we get in the Bible! Eternity will not be long enough to know it all.