Truly Life

Excerpt from Desiring God: How to Live a Simple and Wasted Life


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What Thoreau Never Caught

This emptiness is shown by what has become of the site of Thoreau’s experiment in pursuing the marrow of life. Walden is almost sacred ground for many, memorialized with granite stones like a grave. A half a million pilgrims visit the site each year, because they resonate with Thoreau’s God-given sense that life should not be wasted. Though, ironically, the grounds now house a state-of-the-art visitor center and gift shop.

It isn’t so much in Thoreau’s simplicity that he points to the way that leads to life. It’s in his ending words, his intuitive sense that there must be a better future than this — “a resurrection and immortality.” His intuition was right, even if his religious conclusions were not.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Which is why Paul said, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). And it’s why Paul said that those who put their hope in the Resurrection and the Life “[store] up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19).

No one in heaven envies the rich of this world. No one covets the famous. No one praises the powerful. They have discovered what it means to “live deep and suck all the marrow out of life.” They have found that which is truly life: Jesus Christ. [emphasis added]