I read an article in the paper today about an American guy who just died here in Cambodia. He was in prison, charged with pedophilia after allegedly molesting young girls. The article said he reached through the bars with a mop handle and slid an officer’s gun into his cell and then blew himself away. He was just cremated at a pagoda, and his remains are being sent home to his family in the States. Besides the guy who did the cremation the only other person on hand was the ambulance driver who had brought the body and served as the witness. No mourners, no one.

If this man were to have a funeral, what would people say? Honestly. What can be said? I can’t even imagine the family’s pain in this moment, to have lost their son, their brother, and to have lost him in a way that will not garner much sympathy from anyone. You feel sympathy when a mother of three dies of cancer or when a kid is tragically killed while playing sports on Saturday at the park. But what do you say when a pedophile shoots himself? That’s just sad and shameful.

But this man, this pedophile, started off as a kid like anyone else. Maybe he had a happy childhood, or maybe he was caught up in a cycle of abuse like all too many. Maybe his upbringing brought him to this. Or maybe he grew up with loving parents who cared deeply for him and maybe at some point there was some small but powerful event that drove him off the deep end. Maybe a bully, or a careless word, or one small bad decision. The article didn’t say. Or maybe this man was just particularly evil and a lost cause all along. Is that it? Or are all of us, given certain conditions and circumstances, prone to the same kind of thing? Am I capable of evil like that?

You just wonder.

Then I also wonder, what will people say at my funeral? And will they mean it, or will it just be a bunch of nice stuff you’re supposed to say at funerals because it is not polite to sound like the person who died was actually a selfish jerk or a piece of scum or whatever? It’s sobering to think about these kinds of things, but in a way, it is also invigorating. Why? Because I’m not dead yet, and judging by the fact that you’re reading this, I’d guess you’re not dead either. Maybe death will come knocking tomorrow, or maybe it will be fifty years from now. There’s still some more of the story left to write. Maybe if I were to die tomorrow the eulogy would be positive and sincere, but if I lived a while longer and never did another good thing and never cared for anyone from tomorrow until the age of 80, why should anyone say anything good in my memory? “The Tim who just died may have been a jerk, but he started off well, and that counts for something.” Who cares, really, about the first 24 years if the remaining 55 are characterized by self-indulgence that made everyone around miserable?

It would be great, wouldn’t it, to live the sort of life that when you die, whether “prematurely” or not, people would be able to really mean it when they say that you were one of the most loving people they have ever known? What if the first thing they were to say about you had to do with your vibrant relationship with God, and how your joy was so cantagious?

We get to asking these kinds of questions and slowly, a lot of the things we put so much value on in our everyday lives tend to kind of fade into insignificance. I heard someone say once that if you reach back into eternity past, all you have is God. If you reach into eternity future, you have God and people. It only makes sense, then, as people of God, to place a pretty high value on people, to be concerned about who we are becoming personally, and intentional about how we live in relation to those around us.

Death is not the end. It is a new and never ending part of the story, for better or worse. But the story is already underway, and while you and I may not have control over very much in this world, the decisions we make today, and even the small ones, really add up.

Let’s write a good story, people. Let’s not leave people lying about us when the fat lady sings.