Death is present with us every day of our lives, it behooves us to take note of its nearness, not as a threat, but as our common experience on the way to grace. —Abbot Radulfus in The Leper of St. Giles by Ellis Peters
In addition to the recent, unexpected bridge collapse in Minneapolis, in my circle of friends there are have been, what seems to be, an increased incidence of death and near-death experiences of family and friends. I received a phone call last evening from a friend in Santa Margarita whose dad went in for a routine procedure and is now in critical condition. A friend in Huntington Beach was on vacation with his parents when his father suffered a serious heart incident.
All of these situations remind us that life is, in fact, what Isaiah describes in the Hebrew scriptures,
“Shout that people are like the grass.
Their beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field.
The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord.
And so it is with people."
As the Abbot in the above-mentioned novel points out, this is not a threat. It is a fact of life that God intends to use to help us to live fully in this life and to prepare fully for the next. Maybe it’s middle-age, and the limitations that come with it, but I find myself less enamored with what I can do and more receptive to what God can do. Death has a way of putting my earthly life in context.
1 comment:
Death is really the transcendent moment of life. It is the moment that gives it meaning, reality and substance. If when we die we face our Creator God to account for what we do and do not do, then our entire lives point to that moment and no other moment. It is that understanding that causes us to fall back onto the propritiation of Christ's blood. The Christian life is simply not sustainable in a mindset that can remove the reality of our deaths from everyday living.
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