“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest.”
– Galatians 6:9
In the 2008 comedy hit The Bucket List Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play two terminally ill men who decide to escape together from the cancer ward and head out on a road trip with a wish list – their “bucket lists” – of things they want to do before they die. Great movie! You’ve probably seen it, but if not you should go check it out.
Thanks in part to that movie’s popularity, the term “bucket list” has since become part of our common vocabulary, used in conversations everywhere nowadays. “I’ve always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail,” we hear people say, or “it’s on my bucket list to visit New Zealand someday.” We’re sort of a bucket list minded society, each of us longing to see, do, or experience certain things while we are alive on this earth. Unlike the movie, however, most of us who talk about our bucket lists are not terminally ill – except for having some vague realization of our mortality – and are at least healthy enough, at the moment, that such desires do not seem unrealistic.
Have you ever noticed, though, that most bucket list conversations seem to revolve around consumption – what kind of places can I go, sites can I see, adventures can I experience while I am able? How can I enrich myself; how full can I fill my bucket? But there are some who view their bucket differently, the ones whose buckets are filled with things to invest so as to enrich the lives of others. My dear friend and long-time office mate Jim Webb was like that. Jim, who had already been diagnosed with cancer, after returning from a doctor’s visit one day walked into my office and sat down. “The doctor says I have maybe a year,” he shared with me. Then a huge smile appeared across his face. “You know,” he gleamed, “a person can do a lot of good in a year.” Another terminally ill friend and old coaching colleague, Buzz Kolbe, did a most remarkable thing in his final days. To everyone who came to his bedside he gave a rubber bracelet inscribed with his favorite Bible verse (2 Timothy 1:7), a verse that had inspired his life.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest.” And that is what Jim and Buzz did in their last days. They were bucket-listers too, except they weren’t consumers, they were investors.