I missed it this time around. And I miss it … parts of it,
anyway. That and the death of a canine friend got me to thinking: it is our lot
as humans to “not miss the water ‘till the well runs dry”. Put another way, we
float and glide and bounce through life until we find struggle, pain, and face
our vulnerability; only then do we reflect on the reality of our mortality, on death.
God often warned Israel about being wealthy and comfortable,
and losing sight of him, like if they didn't need him anymore. It seems that when we’re well-off we don’t go deep; we
enjoy, entertain ourselves, and fool ourselves into thinking all is well, we
got it covered. We gloss. God slowly recedes into our background. (Hence Jesus
many, many warnings to the rich).
But there’s this reality lurking in the shadows we so
adroitly manoeuver past – the fact that we get sick, we get hurt, we get into
an accident, we get old … we die. It’s rather sobering, don’t you think?
I have a healthy, outgoing, exercising friend who is now
immobile for 3 months because of injury. I haven’t been in contact with him for
some years, but I understand he is open to religious-talk at this point (and he
may well have been on that track for some time; as I said, I haven’t been in
contact recently). But he’s stuck, and his mind moves to his mortality, and to real-life
– “I am mortal. One day I will die.”, and wherever that leads in his mind. I remember
being in a hospital bed for 2 days waiting for an operation, and the places my
mind went in that short time. I gave serious consideration to ‘meeting my God’,
and prepared myself as best I could.
Why is it that we only get serious about life/afterlife when
we are faced with death? I mean, there’s the fact of it: we see it every day,
especially as we get older, and more and more friends and family die, pets
included. But somehow, it’s a passing sorrow and we usually don’t allow it to
influence our life, not for very long, anyway.
Death should influence how we live.
Some would say that’s a negative take on it. Maybe. But if
it takes negativity to reorient our worldview more towards the real, then so be
it. Let’s use it! Don’t live there or wallow in it; but use it.
It’s the suffering man that writes the hymn, the person in a
‘home for the aged’ that longs to see his long-diss’ed family and put things right … Somehow sorrow
and hurt and death bring out the deep, the dark, the whatever in us, and we get
real with ourselves, because it is then we see clearly that we are but flesh
and blood, like a wisp of smoke, a blade of grass, a fading flower…
Some time ago I blogged on the benefits of journaling and
the introspection it brings. I guess this blog runs the same street. I need to
be more aware of time spent thinking on mortality, spirituality and loving-my-neighbour-ality.
Eternity is now, but it takes a lot of guts to face the fact that I may be
well, have enough (or more than enough) money, a secure job, etc., and yet
fail: I could be run over by a distracted driver … today. I could suffer a heart attack.
While we joy in Easter, and glory be, we should – it’s the
linchpin of our faith -, we would do well to balance our optimism with a
sobering shot of our mortality. It is a useful tool in bringing us back to the
reality of death, and the incredible significance of each moment we live now,
today, here, in this place, with that person there, the person I’ll see at the
supermarket, the ones I jog past on the street …
One day death itself will be thrown head-first into the Lake
of Fire, praise God. Until then, I want to be using that enemy, brought into
this sphere by the advent of sin, to remind my self of my mortality and the significance
of being …
shalom
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