Wednesday, May 07, 2008 So, you want to be rich and famous? By Henrylito D. Tacio Regarding Henry
WHEN I was still in college, one of the most-often played songs in the radio was "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." Memorable lines include these: "And as for fortune and as for fame I never invited them in. Though it seems to the world they were all I desired."
To some people, fame is offered in a silver platter. Remember the precocious Tatum O'Neal? Being the daughter of her famous father, she was given the supporting role in Paper Moon. She became the toast of the tinsel town and even snatched an Oscar trophy for her debut performance.
"The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time," said William Hazlitt. "Fame is a bee," wrote poet Emily Dickinson. "It has a song. It has a sting. Ah, too, it has a wing."
Rick Warren, the famous author of The Purpose Driven Life and church pastor of Saddleback Church in California, knows this. He never dreams of becoming rich and famous.
When interviewed by Paul Bradshaw recently if what is the purpose of a person's life here on earth, he replied, "Life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in heaven."
He further explained, "(Our life here on earth) is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. The day is soon coming when Jesus will raise us from our graves and take us to be with Him. God wants us to practice here on earth how we will live in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense."
Recently, Warren's wife, Kay, has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer. "Life is a series of problems: you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one."
From the Bradshaw interview, Warren came up with these words of wisdom: "I used to think that life was hills and valleys -- you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life."
Talking the good things and the bad things, Warren stated, "No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for."
The American pastor said that we have to deal with both the good and the bad that life brings. "Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder," he pointed out.
"For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease."
With the money pouring in, he remembered II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72. "We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions, for popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures, guilt, bitterness, materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?"
Today, when Warren gets up in the morning, "I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings, not human doings."
Or to quote the words of Alexander Smith, "I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame."
