A reverie concerning life and death (and everything in between)

I once heard Rich Mullins say that people called him morose because a lot of his work focused on the topic of death. He responded that all through history, Christians have looked forward to death because of the assurance of what lies beyond, and that maybe we now have it backwards in wanting to hold on to the here and now.

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Our bodies are broken and we are wasting away. I'm reminded of this now and then on Sunday mornings. I shake hands with the greeters - wrinkled, weathered hands. We're asked to pray for people in hospice and for the families of those recently 'gone home to be with the Lord.' My pastor is right, and so is David Crowder, when both of them say that everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

Not only does nobody want to die, but nobody seems to want to even think about dying, which means few do so until so doing is inescapable. Which is of course what it ends up being for all of us eventually, in one way or another, and often repeatedly.

This is all sobering to consider, as one who is young and vibrant, with so much life ahead of me, and so many untapped dreams and longings.

And if I'm prone to feel alone now, how much more alone will I feel years from now if/when my wife dies before I do? Because all of us who don't get divorced, don't get married, or do get married but don't die first, will be widows and widowers, and that amounts to a lot of us. Further, we'll all see parents and siblings die, as well as friends, both close and distant.

Death, save the rapture, is inevitable. Remind us that this life is the prelude and this body is a tent.

We're tadpoles who can't quite fathom froghood, though any five-year-old knows that froghood is what tadpoles are made for. We're fetuses in the womb, with no idea that there's light, or air, or food, or sex, or trees, or sunsets, or death - and yet fetuses are not ultimately made to be fetuses.

We were made to be born, to live, to die, and then to really live.

Atheists say that believers who have their heads in the cloud-world of eternity are actually threats to the here and now in much the same way that suicide bombers are threats, because to believers it's all the same if the world goes to hell - today or forever - just as long as they (and by they, I mean we) get out, and get to heaven.

I can't blame atheists for feeling this way, to be honest, because there are many who at least appear to live life with this sort of a mindset. "The environment is the least of our worries," they say. "It is arrogant to suggest that man can ruin God's creation. He won't let it come to that." Or "It's really too bad, the poor and sick and starving, but we need to put things in perspective. Our body is a tent. It's the soul that matters. Don't worry about the physical; focus on the spiritual."

But I wonder if these people, these believers, are reading their Bibles. It's cool if the atheists aren't, but you'd think believers would be.

There's got to be more to it than this. Do You really want us tracking mud all over Your house, recognizing after all, that we won't live here forever? Or could it be true that You've put this longing for eternity in our hearts so we don't get comfortable, so we don't kick our shoes off and zone out in front of the tube when there's work to be done, but instead so we, with our eyes on You and our hearts in eternity, will join You in the kingdom work You are doing here and now?

Lord, these are big questions.

Death, from all of our earthly experience (which, it could be said, is all the experience we have had), is completely and totally final. And it is often tragic. We sense it when watching movies: the bloody knife, the smoking gun, the crumpled body at the base of the skyscraper, the lungs that breathe their last. Tears; lots of tears. And silence.

I don't think You'd have us take death lightly, but neither would You have us become overwhelmed by it, forgetting what lies beyond, forever. For even if our interpretation of our experience tells us one thing, our faith tells us another, and while this may be tough to come to terms with, we are, after all, people of faith first, recognizing that we see only in part. But I'm not sure there needs to be a big chasm here between faith and experience. I think most of us can say that even our experience hints at something more. It hints that one day we will no longer be swimming in a pond without legs, but we will sprout legs and hop out onto solid ground. And we will not always be cooped up in this dark cave with this dang umbilical cord, but one day we will, for whatever reason, have a belly button, and we will see light, eat food, drink wine, breathe air, watch the sunset. And when we sprout legs and breathe air we will know that while we were indeed real tadpoles and real fetuses, we are now more real than we ever knew possible.

Give us a perspective on death that fills us with hope and joy, and give us a passion for life that fills the world with the same. When I look at Your Son, Jesus, I see one who undoubtedly had his eyes on eternity and yet was present and alive in the nitty gritty of life.

This is real life, all of it. And when we catch a glimpse of it, we won't have to choose between eternal life on earth and eternal life in heaven. And neither will the one who, until now, called himself an atheist.