In View of Death

This cloudy rainy morning I sit contemplating the fragileness of life.  This is a normal reaction I think anytime you’re about to go to a funeral.  Someone we met when we first arrived here in FWB almost exactly 20 years ago died last week.  This person was always nice to us as a person and family, even if he was somewhat less reliable as a client (Architects are just that way).   But he always had a smile and a chuckle every time I spoke to him and he never treated us as new young people not quite worthy of his stature or class even though he was very well connected and thought of in the community.  As much as I can remember, every time I asked him for something he helped.

Oddly enough, even though I know this is a time to remember him and who he was, I can’t help but have thoughts about the kind of person I am.  What will some young person think about me one day when I am no longer here?  Will there be a lasting impact or any impact at all upon this world?  Or, does it even matter? 

My thoughts move towards a more difficult question.  Will anyone know the truth of life simply because I was alive?  Are those around me or within my realm of contact influenced to know God or at least to have seen at least a small characteristic of God?  …  Ultimately, did I allow the desires of my heart to change from being for me to being to Christ so He could love others whom I could not; so He could forgive others when I could not; so He could help others where I could not?  …  There is still so much work to do in this heart of mine and time stands still for no man.

Yet, even in the reality of the sin in my own heart stands victory.  1 Corinthians 15:54-57 reads, “Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?’  For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power.  But thank God!  He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  I am not forced to stay bound by the pain of sin in my heart.  It has been conquered, for when I gave that part of me inherited from Adam and Eve to God He destroyed it as a road block between us.  He reached out with the power of all of life and accepted me forever.

Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.

    Remind me that my days are numbered—

    how fleeting my life is.

You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.

    My entire lifetime is just a moment to you;

    at best, each of us is but a breath.

We are merely moving shadows,

    and all our busy rushing ends in nothing.

We heap up wealth,

    not knowing who will spend it.

And so, Lord, where do I put my hope?

    My only hope is in you. - Psalms 39:4-7