> I'm wondering, what does life mean to you people? What keeps you going? What is important?
>
> I'm asking this in all seriousness, so, please, no silly responses. Light-hearted is okay, but don't say anything like "doughnuts."

Okay, so I'm late in joining this thread, but I just can't let it slip by entirely. In fact, a few days before this was posted, I had been thinking of starting a new thread asking for basically the same "meaning-of-life" type responses. Further evidence that Darien and I are, in fact, the same person. ;-)

There's so much I could say, but most of it would be merely repeating the insights that other folks have expressed already in this thread, so I'll stick to what has been particularly on my mind of late.

Since I'm working on scripting an Easter drama for my church (certain people are no doubt sick of hearing me talk about that by now ... sorry!), the promise of resurrection after death has captured my imagination even more than it usually does. (Resurrection of the person -- physically as well as spiritually -- is one of the most fascinating doctrines of the Bible, and it's interesting to contrast it with the idea of the "immortality of the soul", which in my view is an intrusion of Greek philosophy into proper Biblical teaching. But that's for another time.)

To the matter: if I truly believed that the span of years I have to exist on this earth was all there was, I would not be able to accept anything, however profound or "larger" than myself, as sufficient to provide meaning to my life. The cessation of my existence -- that great and terrible enemy, death -- trumps all other considerations. The interests of "life" and of "death" cannot be reconciled; they are bitterly and eternally opposed to one another, and if death emerges the victor in that contest, then I deceive myself in trying to find meaning and value in whatever time is granted me before that inevitable defeat.

However.

If final victory in the great struggle is awarded to life, not death, then I'm free to find meaning almost *everywhere* in creation. God has made His realm rich with truth and meaning. There's almost nothing insignificant that I could do in an eternal kingdom governed by God. It is the hope for that life in eternity that renders life in the present meaningful.

The resurrection of Christ: one of the most disputed articles of faith since the Enlightenment, and many theologians have viewed it as disposable baggage, even an impediment to their efforts to keep Christianity "relevant" to today's world. Yet that victory over death is the one thing that people crave as they contemplate their own mortality today. The Apostle Paul had it right in I Corinthians: "If Christ be not raised from the dead, your faith is in vain."

Iss "It is the hope that of all the doughnuts in eternity, Krispy Kreme doughnuts may be among them, that renders life in the present even more extra-meaningful" achar