Discerning Death

You must be getting sick of the acronyms?

It seems that for the past three weeks I have had some dealing with death, and on top of that issue life.

The first incident was on a Tuesday when I had to put down my dog who I grew up with. The Second was the same week where I had a dream that my best friend of many years had died and this is significant only because I accredit this dream to the holy spirit (will elaborate further soon.) The third was when I had found out that my soccer coach for 2008 had passed away. The fourth was hearing of the tragic death of a former Youth that went to our youth group who died in her sleep.

In 2007 I had to deal with my first loss of a loved one and I must say that I coped reasonably well, so its certainly not as if I have not had to deal with death before in my life. But this time felt different, it felt like a way to give my life direction, it felt like a kick in the butt by God. I mentioned that dream of a close mates funeral and as I woke that morning this daunting feeling hit me as if a voice in my head asking ‘now what are you going to do with your life?’ the normal voice would have said something like ‘what a tragedy, it will make you stronger’ but this felt more convicting than anything else. The feeling that accompanied that thought / voice was one of urgency as I remember vividly that rather than feeling grief for the loss of my friend in this funeral I felt regret. Regret that I would never see him again. Never.

I say this because of the beliefs I hold which are of a Christian influence and I need not say more for you to draw your own conclusions but all this thought of death really got me thinking about how I’m going to live my life and it brings to mind a very humble quote from the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” which said that we better ‘get busy living, or get busy dying.’ Too often in life our focus in on things, things that apparently please us and give us comfort, things that cost money, things that hypnotise us with their entertainment, with their accessorised glamour or that we try to attain a feeling, a feeling of true love, of true joy or true peace. It is not the least bit coincidental that at a funeral we go about explaining what the departed did with his or her life and after watching ‘the Bucket List’ for the second time I thought I would write my own bucket list and lo and behold the list was mostly full of things or feeling that we think will allow us to live life.

I have always said that the thing I fear the most would be to not live my life to the full, and immediately I imply that we have some sort of measure by which we live our lives, as if to say that the homeless man on the sidewalk has not lived as much as the rich man who travels the world, climbing mountains, skydiving and visiting pyramids yet we fail to see the circumstances that surround this as I have just pointed out with the obstacle of money. I would say that subconsciously we have accepted that our surplus of money discerns how much we ‘live life’

It seems that no matter how hard we try to ‘live life’ we are always stopped by circumstances, by things that intrude and enforce their way into our lives. It’s the love of money, the love of things that we are all entrapped by, even though it is temporal, even though these items of desire serve no purpose once we are gone from this world we still have a desire to seek them. I propose that within this desire we seek meaning, we have a hope that our life will not be in vain if we enjoy it whilst we still can. We seek to have a purpose to our life, to influence others and leave a legacy behind so that our own personal ethics and good deeds will live on past our own selfish desire for things.

It is too true that life is fragile, those of you who have ever been to a funeral or witnessed a horrific car crash will understand when I say that we are but a sheet of glass that will always be broken and as we try to repair ourselves we look for meaning to all this suffering, we look for a reason why life is so painful, why its so hard and we ask ‘why me?’

My brother once shared a poem with me that has had a lot of influence on my life and how I wish to live it out, it’s a short but sweet poem. One that captures the answer to all of those questions, one that offers us a fleeting glimpse of what our life is for and what is to come in our next life.

“Only one life
T’will soon be past
Only what’s done for Christ
Will Last”

I need not say much more than to simply give you this poem and pray that it will impact your life as it has influenced mine, but I must ask you two more questions.
They are questions that the Egyptians believe they would be asked by the Gods as they reached the gates of heaven, and the answer would impact whether they were admitted or not, I believe that these questions as just as Christian as they are Egyptian.
Have you found Joy in your life? And if so have you bought Joy to others?