LIFE

I have a fascination with acronyms. I like learning them. I like seeing/studying them. I like attempting to create them. I have been thinking about LIFE and what it means to me. How do I define my LIFE? What do I love about LIFE? How would I help someone understand why I love LIFE? It was during these thoughts that I created a new acronym. To me, LIFE can be summed up in four words: Love, Influence, Faith, and Experience.
Love
We are told that the first commandment is to love God, and the second is to love our neighbors. Love is kind of like glue and it holds everything in its place. To love and be loved gives us strength and courage.  When you love someone, you are looking out for them and have only their best interest at heart. I was once told that love is in the beginning, middle, and end of relationships. Love can warm you when you are feeling emotionally cold, it makes you happy when you're sad, and it can brighten your day. To love someone else can bring peace and satisfaction to LIFE, it helps us grow and mature and broadens our understanding.
Influence
Whether we want to realize it or not, we are influenced by everything around us. What are we being exposed to? The influence of others shapes who we are, what we think, and how we do things. We are always being influenced, from our parents, siblings, and friends, to media, magazines and advertisements. We need to be sure that the influences that we allow in our LIFE are helping us to become better and that they draw us closer to our Father in Heaven. Likewise, we have the great opportunity and responsibility to be an influence to those we come in contact with.
Faith
While you can have faith of lots of different things, for my purposes today, I mean faith in Jesus Christ. To me, this is probably the most important aspect of my acronym. I mean, without faith in Him, every other aspect would be pointless. LIFE wouldn't be worth living but with faith in Christ, LIFE is an incredible journey. We are not here alone and we weren't sent here without something to do and become. We have to develop this faith and follow the path that leads us home. Our faith will give us something to hold on to when times get rough. If we've built our faith, we will be able to help and life others in their times of need. Our faith is what gives us the strength to move forward and to continue doing so.
Experience
I guess I could have made this acronym an equation also. For example: L+I+F=E. All of these other aspects give us experience. How boring would life be if we gained no experience? Often, we don't get to choose the exact situations that we are in, but we have the ability to choose how we will respond, thus providing experience. While it's true that Love, Influence and Faith will give us experience, gaining life experience will help in all of these other aspects as well. The more experience we have, the easier it is to do something. For example, having several experiences of building our faith in Jesus Christ will make it easier to do the things we need to do to follow Him.

LIFE is wonderful. Yes, there are times where I wonder if I really think that. And yes, there are times where I'm convinced I don't. But, there are always times, more often than not, where I wonder if LIFE could get any better than it is, and then I do the things that I know are right, and it gets better.
My challenge to you would be to focus on one of these things per day - Love, Influence, Faith, Experience. Try harder to love someone (or allow yourself to be loved), watch for the influence you let in your life and the one you give to others, find a way to build your faith, even just a bit, or go out and try something new - gain a new experience. Let's live LIFE to the fullest!