Wasted

“But he had so much promise!” Isn't that what people say? “A life of filled with promise” usually refers to a person who did not live up to his potential, someone whose early promise was not realized.

I am thinking about this because just recently I learned of the deaths of two old friends, Richard and Beth. 

In Richard's obituary, I read that he was a dazzling talent in high school. Reading on, the dazzle seems to have dwindled. Many years of retirement due to illness, minimal travel, quiet friendly get-togethers. The son of wealthy parents, well-educated, a promising entry into business, then, for whatever reason, Richard found himself simply teaching business classes at a state school. The voice of the obituary seems to grow quieter and quieter. Did Richard waste his life?

Beth, wife and mother, PhD in math, taught math at a prestigious east coast college, then not so much. A solid and certain presence in her faith community (in the end, Sufi), spending her last, quiet hours painting water colors. No more high level math; no more published papers and academic acclaim. Did Beth squander her gifts?

I taught school for eleven years and I am very familiar with the mandate to fulfill your potential. Every child has abilities; my job was to find them and ensure they were developed. Living up to your promise is seen as an obligation to society, to your family, to yourself, even to God - the whole burying the talents thing.

But I’m not so sure. I have watched many lives, and I’m not sure I've ever seen a wasted one. Richard had friends. People liked him. I liked him. He had views which he articulated well. He was an amusing dinner guest. He was sincere but not strident. If he made people smile or think, was that enough?

I loved Beth. She was for years, before I moved to the Midwest, my dearest friend. We were both seekers after God. We spent hours together, drank a lot of wine, laughed ourselves sick. We saw The Godfather five times together. In the theater. We went to church together and prayed together. As Beth grew closer to her soul and her faith, she grew farther from academia. She had a brilliant mind and a natural talent for abstract math. Did she waste her life? Many would say so.

Tianna was one of my students. She lived in the projects. Not especially smart or winning, she loved a laugh and a prank. In the classroom, she was a “challenge.” Two years after she was in my second grade class, I sat on our bed, propped up on pillows, pampered from just having given birth to our daughter a week before, I watched the noonday news while nursing my precious baby girl. I saw a stretcher being wheeled out of a building. The building looked a lot like the projects near my school.

Then it came. The reporter announced that the body of Tianna Lewis had been found beaten, raped and stabbed just that morning. My Tianna on the news. My baby Alice in my arms.

Nobody bemoaned a wasted life that day, at least not publicly. Tianna did not have a lot of promise. She was not expected to be great. She may or may not have grown up and accomplished fine things. Was her short, ten-year-old life wasted?

It was not. No life is wasted. Even a life lived only a few days or hours is perfect and complete. Life is a gift from God; however it is lived, it is not for nothing.

There will always be people who build great structures, found institutions, compose masterpieces. There will always be people who drift through life with nothing. There will be those whose love and grace fill a room, even a city, and there will be those whom no one notices. All this weighing and comparing of results is nonsense. More than that, it’s ungodly. Who are we to click our tongues over someone who does not fulfill her promise? What can we possibly know about any life? Why are we so quick to point that finger? Does all this judging give us an edge somehow?

Scripture has a lot to say about waste. God sends out his rain and it doesn't return to him but waters the fields. Jesus always puts his lamps on tables so everyone has light. Branches are pruned. Grain is winnowed. Flocks are sorted. Paul avidly grows the church from a tiny nubbin to a worldwide institution. So as a believer, I should be quick to frown when lives are not fully lived. The problem is: I can never hope to know when anything is wasted. 

My own life, my own vocation is barely visible to me. Another person’s life? Hidden. Forever hidden. So back off, people who like to shake their heads over “wasted lives.” You know nothing. Stand down, you who point accusingly at those who "wander and waste."

No life is wasted. Money, property, accomplishments, family, brilliance, reputation, are these not things of the flesh? A faltering businessman, a dropped-out academic, a murdered ten year old, none of these have failed to live up to anything. They were God’s children, showing the face of Christ to anyone who cared to see it.