"I've never really used full stops, Miss. I've never needed them."
Such was the highlight of a recent conversation with a Year 7. Instead of correctly separating his sentences with full stops, each page was a never-ending sentence, littered with commas, for which the reader needed one huge breath to complete.
Rather than providing useful pauses and breathers to divide up the information, everything ran into itself and tripped over itself. There was too much information and not enough time or space to process it.
In writing, full stops are essential for the reader. But sometimes in life, we can focus too much on the 'full stops'. We get distracted by the next pause, the next break, the next significant marker in our lives - If I could just make it to the weekend. This time next year, things will be better. When I get a better-paid job, I'll be happier. When I meet someone. When I get married. When we have kids. etc. We think that our lives will be complete and we will find significance and meaning when we reach these milestones.
We look to the horizon and wait for our fulfilment.
But as Connie says in Mona Lisa Smile -
"The horizon is an imaginary line that recedes as you approach it."
If we are always looking to the next 'full stop', we will miss what is happening in our lives right now.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says,
"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes."
[Matthew 6:34 MSG, emphasis mine]
We need to stop looking to the 'full stops' in our lives as markers of success and achievement, and instead make the decision to live right now and take on the attitude of Paul:
"As long as I’m alive in this body, there is good work for me to do."
[Philippians 1:22 MSG]
Our lives are ever-evolving stories, not just a collection of full stops. We are meant to live between the punctuation marks.
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