How do you know if you’ve lived, loved, and mattered?
Can you cobble together a definition of what living means to you?
It has to be more than a heartbeat and brain activity.
That’s being alive, but the bar is set too low if that’s a definition of living.

The question gets easier to answer if you can say a simple yes to the last two.

Jesus loved those God had given Him to love in this world.
Through His death He demonstrated God’s love for all mankind, but this verse is talking about the men and women who followed Him during His ministry. He loved them.

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Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.
John 13:1

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Can you say you’ve loved those God has given you in this life?
That’s the example we have from Jesus.

Loving those in your life is what makes your life matter.
Missing this will lessen the influence and impact of your life.
You may not be known by many people outside your own family, but if you’ve loved them well, then your life has, by the most important measure, mattered.

Have you lived?
Lots of people start thinking Bucket List when asked a question like that.
Living isn’t about doing though. It’s a state of being determined by your relationship to God.
He is the source of all life and being rightly related to Him is what enables you to live.
Without it you just exist.

Evaluating your life periodically can give you renewed clarity and the opportunity to make a course correction before you get too far off track. These three simple questions can remind you of what’s important, even vital to you.

Look at the people in your life today.
While you’re doing that, hold the question in your mind, do I love.

Did is past tense.
Do is now.
Now is what matters, now is what you can change.

* A special thanks to Kate Bortell who generously left a trail of breadcrumbs to www.livelifehappy.com