Bucket List

What are your plans for this year?

Swim with the sharks at the West End, Grand Bahama Islands or go HALO skydiving?

I’m getting to a point in life where I’m starting to assess all the things I’ve done. And the question is, have I done everything I want to do; have I completed everything on my bucket list if I had a bucket list? And, since I don’t have a bucket list, should I create one?

Right off the bat, I can see one advantage in creating a bucket list. If there is something you really want to do, you need to put it on a list so it can be checked off when done.

The advantage of a bucket list is that it is a list. It is not that it is a list of things to do in the future, but that it is an action plan. It is something written down that you can tangibly see that you are planning to do. Tasks written down are far more likely to be completed.

Unfortunately, it is a first step that many people never take.

Most people dream of doing something. It doesn’t matter if it is grandiose or insignificant, but dreaming is as far as they get. No plan is ever formulated, and no action is ever taken. Nothing is ever written down.

So, for those people, making a bucket list is a great first step.

One potential disadvantage of a having a bucket list is the product of the bucket list. Is your bucket list a list of things to simply be done, or is it a list of things to be experienced?

I’ve heard of a couple who are attempting to visit every country in the world as their bucket list. Well, “visit” is a stretch. In many countries, their plane lands, they rush to get their passports stamped, and then they rush to get back on the plane and go to another country.

In the end, they have a passport full of stamps, but what about all the experiences and memories that are supposed to go with traveling?

Maybe instead of a list that needs to be checked off, you have just one significant item in which to immerse yourself. It can be big like sail around the world or small like visit every major league baseball park in America. In the end, the time is spent building memories and experiences you would never get anywhere else.

You don’t need a list of things to be done when you have just one future plan to be fully experienced.

The second disadvantage of a bucket list is that it is a list of the things you want to do before the end, before you die, before you never get to do anything ever again. That presupposes that when you die, it’s all over.

For the Christian, death is the beginning of our adventure.

1 Corinthians 15:52-53 – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

Philippians 3:20-21 – But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Feel free to make a bucket list or not. If there is something you are dreaming of, put it on a list and get started. But do not think that the list ends when life ends, our adventures begin with the return of Christ.