Survivors: Who Will Survive?

Sixteen people journeyed to the Australian Outback as part of CBS television show Survivors, attempting to be the last person voted out in order to win a substantial prize package. Total strangers, they formed two tribes, and now are down to one as each week another contestant is voted out. I am not here to promote the program. I do want to draw some analogies and provide you with some practical steps for your own survival.

Everyone of us here entered this world as strangers. For most, our introduction to the world came at a sterile hospital delivery room. People walking around wearing masks, glaring lights, and then someone hoists us up by our feet and whacked us on the behind. How many of you can remember? How many of you are in therapy because of it right now? It seems as life progresses, not much changes, life continues to whack at us, and some days it takes effort just to survive. How do we live through this outback experience and come out a winner in the end? First…

1. You Need to Know the Rules.

The contestants on Survivors have a list of rules to follow that prevent them from being eliminated from the competition, such as they can make no deal to share the prize money with others, and they must participate in all events and activities. Besides that, they also have some common sense tips such as “When collecting firewood, always use a stick to overturn the wood before picking it up. Fallen timber is an ideal habitat for snakes, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, etc.” Another is to “Never confront wild animals such as dingoes, wild pigs, kangaroos and snakes. If threatened, they will retaliate; for example, if you walk through a narrow path leading to the river and one of the above is drinking, with no escape route, it will attack.”

Author Robert Fulgrum wrote All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be,

I learned in kindergarten.

Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain,

but there in the sandpile at Sunday School.

These are the things that I learned:

Share everything

Play fair

Don’t hit people

Put things back where you found them

Clean up your mess

Don’t take things that aren’t yours

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody

Wash your hands before you eat

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you

Live a balanced life; learn some and think some

and draw and paint and sing and dance

and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together

Be aware of wonder

Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup ;

The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why,

but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup

They all die

So do we

And then remember the Dick and Jane books and the first word you learned the biggest word of all

LOOK

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere

The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation

Ecology and politics and equality and sane living

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm

Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.

Or if all the governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess

And it is still true, no matter how old you are... when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Jesus was asked about the rules of life and He responded in Luke 10:27 "`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ ; and, `Love your neighbor as yourself.’ "

I might add, the only place you will ever fully understand the full impact for living is by reading the instruction manual God has given to us, the Bible. 2 Timothy 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

If you are going to survive in life, you need to know the rules of survival. You also need to