Have you ever created a Bucket List, if not in a written form, at least entertained a thought that someday I’d like to have accomplished (fill in the blank)? I’ll even settle for a checkmark beside the item: Watched the 2007 Rob Reiner movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman entitled The Bucket List. See, you could create a Bucket List and name it: Movies I Need to See. If you know me personally, or have even scanned some blog posts, you are probably aware that I L-O-V-E lists, especially those related to traveling: Visit all 50 states. Check. Complete a race in all 50 states. Check. Visit all the Major League Baseball parks. Check. Visit 10 countries. Check (and added bonus, Liechtenstein). Anyway, you get the idea. And I’m accepting suggestions for a new travel list.

Author Jay Payleitner shares, “A Bucket List is quite literally a list—written down or mulled over in your mind—of things you want to do before you kick the bucket.” Now, what are the odds that on the same day I am reading his book, the Fresh Life message I hear from Levi Lusko is entitled “Kicking the Bucket List”? To provide perspective on his theme and the origin of the phrase, Lusko describes how buckets were once used in executions. The person to be hung would stand on a bucket with their hands tied behind their back. A solider would be provided a command to kick the bucket causing a sudden drop which led to the person’s death. “Eventually, the bucket became associated with expiring, kicking the bucket for shorthand…At some point along the way, someone realized that what goes into the bucket represents what you do between birth and death.” Therefore, a Bucket List references those things one desires to accomplish before they die.

Literally the same day, I scanned the table of contents of Ann Voskamp’s book The Broken Way, and behold, a chapter entitled “What’s Even Better than a Bucket List,” so whether you’re into Bucket Lists or not, it was destined for me to write today’s post. Voskamp shares her experience with the topic while sitting in a Waiting Room perusing a magazine for something to read to pass the time. The author’s viewpoint on creating a Bucket List contrasted with her own life events, as he focused on future happenings that a person might experience to usher in happiness and fulfillment. Voskamp’s desire was to communicate to this author “‘Look, the whole lot of us are done with waiting room theology. We are done waiting for some elusive future moment to say life is good enough. We are done waiting for some big enough house, some big enough step up, some big, exciting experience to finally think we’ve arrived at the abundance of being and living enough.’” Instead Voskamp recommends not waiting for some good thing to happen but to take action now. “What if instead of sitting in life’s waiting room, waiting for a chance for something good enough to happen to check off a bucket list—what if abundant living isn’t about what you can expect from life, but what life can expect from you?”

Voskamp’s final challenge reflects both Payleitner and Lusko’s perspectives and those shared in the post Fillers and Dippers, “Why grow the list of what I want to have instead of the list of what I can give? Empty, poured out buckets are actually the fullest buckets…Isn’t that what the great point of an abundant [flourishing] life is, that we have stories to share? We aren’t here to one-up one another, but to help one another up.”

Although it is highly unlikely that I will ever cease creating any list, much less a Bucket List, after all, it provides goals to aim for and continuous movement forward in life; however, the nature of the items on those lists might begin to progress into something that resembles more emptying than filling, especially if I allow God to write my Bucket List. So, whether you intentionally consider how God might be leading you into a flourishing life, with 52 or 1,000 things, whether you are in Emerging Adulthood or in an Encore Career, prayerfully ask Him to reveal His ways to you. As Voskamp shares, “Experiencing the whole world will not fill your bucket like experiencing giving yourself, and finding meaning that will fill your soul.” May your life be lived abundantly, with a little or a lot, and filled to the brim so you can make plans for how to create an Empty Bucket!

Perhaps you have some great advice for items to be included on a Bucket List God helps to create. Would you consider sharing those ideas in the comments below?

References:

Lusko, L. (2022, August 7). Kicking the bucket list. Fresh Life Church. [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.freshlife.church/messages/kicking-the-bucket-list

Payleitner, J. (2015). What if God wrote your bucket list? 52 things you don’t want to miss. Harvest House Publishers.

Voskamp, A. (2016). The broken way: A daring path into the abundant life. Zondervan.