The Dynamic Life

Ok, I admit it, the title is a redundancy, in case you picked up on that.  Life, by definition, is dynamic.  In other words, our life is always full of life, active and moving.  Even for the couch potato, the assembly line worker and the elderly in the nursing home.  Of course, these are stereotypes, but a stereotype is a stereotype because it is built on the reality of the picture. 
So the title "The Dynamic Life" does not necessarily mean the "productive life" or "the positive life", but simply that life is ever changing, never static. As we go through our days, we are doing something, both physically and mentally.  We are either growing and improving or growing and diminishing.  There is no such thing as a static human being. 
So the question is, "Which one are you?"  In our day and age, there are so many possibilities for growth and improvement. But at the same time, there are so many opportunities for distraction and loss.  We can put in our eight hours a day of work and then waste the rest of our time in distractions and entertainments.  In this case, we are diminishing, as we are not using the mind and/or body that God has given us.  Or we could be using the rest of our time for the improvement of our minds, our bodies or the improvement of others.  Granted, there is the fourth option of our efforts going toward the diminishing of others, and unfortunately, this is common.
So where are we at?  A slow decline into mediocrity and waste or are we growing and improving.  We only have so much time, considering that most of us have to work and sleep, which is 2/3's of our day.  What do we do with the other eight hours?

Swimming in mediocrity

Over the past many years, there have a been a handful of Hollywood movies where the main characters are born into an artificial environment and then, for some reason are thrust back into reality.  The movie then focuses on their coming to terms with what is actually reality, as opposed to what they thought was reality.
This is us. Being born in to the 21st century culture of the USA, we are swimming in mediocrity and do not even realize it.  We, our parents, our grandparents and possibly our great grandparents have been immersed in, surrounded by and having fully imbibed, modern culture, that we know no different.  But there is something different.
There are pockets of faith in which some few people live.  I just watched a video of an eight year old girl, a survivor of the Coptic bus shooting in Egypt.  A bus load of Coptic Christians was recently surrounded by four truckloads of Muslim terrorists.  The terrorists proceeded to try to force these Christians to denounce their faith and declare Allah as God and Mohammed as his prophet.  They refused and were immediately shot.  The little girl survived and told the story of how no one on the bus renounced their faith, how they had been faithful and subsequently died as martyrs.
I have to wonder how many Christians in America would do the same.  How many of us, when we go silent in the face of mockery against God, against his clergy, and against his church, would dare to pronounce faith in Jesus Christ in the face of an automatic weapon?
We are swimming in mediocrity, comfort and ease and we know no different.  I often think (and really try to take to heart) that living in the face of danger and demands for faith is better, even when that demand may require our martyrdom.