A short treatise on the subject of death: As I participate in the last few days of the life of Brandys mom Bonnie, I am confronted with a reality that Ive struggled with for as long as I can remember. If my lifes story, as well as the stories of everyone I love, ends with our deaths, and we never get to see each other again, I cannot find any true purpose for this life. Talk of goals, dreams, love, accomplishment, justice, etc become nothing more than the brain chemicals and hormones of an impotent and meaningless species desperately trying to find value in a paradigm that is, by its very nature, valueless. I cannot look my son in his sweet little face and tell him that his place on our planet is a sacred and blessed happening, while at the same time ignoring the greatest inevitability of our humanness: our impending death and the surety of our lives being forgotten with the passage of time, as each and every person who has ever known us disappears to the same end. If this truly is the destiny for each of us, and our culture tries to somehow convince us that we can find true meaning in our relationships, accomplishments, or pursuits, I will respectfully opt out of such a blind and self-serving lie. Better to be honest about lifes desperate, doomed folly than to willingly choose to live in what I know to be fantasy. And this culture, which spins its yarns of meaning as though it had real authority, is the one that will take the fruits of my lifes labor for its own purposes and then bury me under a stone to be forgotten with the passage of time. Again, respectfully, I will choose to opt out of this madness. If nothing is eternal, I cannot find value in anything. I cannot find any better explanation for the brokenness of our world that to attribute it to mans cursed search for meaning on his own terms. And it is from this place of complete and honest despair that I was blindsided by a reality in our midst that I never realized was there; the presence of a grand, good, mighty and loving creator and storyteller, outside of humanitys realm, who knows me by name. He has always been there like a patient father, just waiting for us to call out to him when weve exhausted our attempts at self-significance. A God who gives eternal value to our love and relationships and invites us to be a part of the grandest story of them all: the redemption of all things. All wrongs made right. Every empty heart and soul made eternally full. So in the presence of this insidious, vile death, I can have something that this world around me cannot ever give: hope. Thankfully, we have been given a name to place with this hope; a face to show us what this storyteller is like; a life to show us what real life is to be lived out. And in a final act to lay claim to us as rightfully his, we have the bloodied cross of his love and an empty tomb as proof of his power. My hope, and Bonnies hope, resides in Jesus, son of Joseph, the Nazarene, and in absolutely nothing else.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 22:17:45 +0000