It is Not Death to Die

Joel and I recently biked 26 kilometres and ate incredible ramen. We talked, laughed, checked Little Free Libraries, and pulled off at a cemetery. (Which of these does not belong?)

The short walk in the cemetery clarified my evening and honed my thinking. A part of a stone and a handful of carefully-selected, expensive words–“Gone but Not Forgotten”, “Forever in Our Hearts”, “Until We Meet Again”, “Rest in Peace”, “In Loving Memory”–stand for a human being, a soul. Humanity deeply loves true connection and does not want to be forgotten, but we know our own memories are faulty, prejudiced, incomplete, and deteriorating until death itself. At some point, the grieving ones become themselves the grieved (Ecc 1:4-5; 3:1-2). And how painful to have the entirety of a life–regardless of length or quality or anything more personal–represented by a single dash! To make it more poignant still, many have died with no remembrance of them.

Why visit a cemetery if you don’t know anyone buried there? Is thinking about death morbid? It certainly can be. Some celebrate the grim and grotesque each Halloween. That focus does not represent or inspire wisdom, instead distorting and trivializing what God calls momentous. A preoccupation with death is also not wise. Life’s troubles do overwhelm, but our own death is not the answer.

But death will not be ignored, and God urges us to consider it.

• Remembering death sobers our hearts, refocuses our values, and refines our vision (Ecc 7:2-4; 12:1-7, 13-14).
• Death is the ultimate expression of humanity’s weakness and limitations, sharply contrasted with God’s eternality and steadfast love (Ps 78:38-39; 103:15-18).
• Wisdom remembers the end and views life in the context of eternity (Dt 32:29; Ps 90:12).

This sobriety is not without hope. For the believer, death is the answer to the troubles of life. Death actually threads itself through all of Christian thinking. How could it not? Our Savior died in our place so we could truly live, now and for eternity. And Christ redefines life. Because Jesus died, all who trust in Him can live forever (Jn 3:16). That life begins not in the new heaven and new earth but at salvation itself, overhauling thinking and upending categories, calling us to live not for self but for our Savior (Gal 2:20). The dash on the gravestone of a believer is merely marking the end of life on this sin-saturated, gorgeous, confused planet, the transfer to heaven forever around God’s throne-life as it was always meant to be (Rev 21:1-4).

The believer has brilliant hope where the world has none, a radical hope whose realities do not appeal but is life itself, shining in the worst circumstances. “What is our only hope in life and death? That we are not our own but belong, body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Saviour Jesus Christ” (New City Catechism, question 1).

There is no harm and some wisdom in considering what you would want as your epitaph. Believe it or not, I have a playlist of songs for my funeral–less because I think anyone will remember, certainly not because at that point I will care, absolutely because these are excellent theme songs for life. Life lived wisely is never accidental; rather a daily grace-dependent walk. Wisdom urges that we consider the brevity of life represented by the dash on the tombstone. We only have now to share Christ with those who do not yet know Him. We long for the day when we see our Saviour and our sin struggle is forever ended, but we only have now to love our Saviour by denying self and living for Him. We ache for the day when we join with all believers around the throne and sing with understanding and full hearts, but we only have now to trust and praise our Saviour in faith. Live with the end in mind.