Keep on Living!

          I’ve been dealing with the death of my peers a good bit in the last few weeks.  I’ve lost three colleagues in ministry, a friend from the neighborhood of my youth and a classmate of mine from the University of Georgia.  Each of these persons I would say died young.  Of course the older I get the older young seems to be.  None of them died from accidents but rather from natural causes.

              It has left me wondering if this how the remaining years of my life will be.  Will life become like a bucket with a slow leak with my friends and loved one’s simply leaving drip by drip? 

            Then, to be perfectly honest, the fact that my peers are passing from the bonds of earth has caused me to contemplate my own mortality.  Further, after having a heart procedure a couple of years ago and my wife having a heart attack earlier in the year we have been making some of our marital decisions based on what we need to do “should something happen” to one of us.  Speaking the actual words are a little uncomfortable.

            I’ve never believed that God pre-ordains our life spans.  We do have some control over our life spans by avoiding tobacco use, not drinking to excess, having a proper diet, getting regular check-ups and not sky diving without a parachute. 

By the same token we have no control over our genetics, or the destructive actions of others.  None of us can control that driver that runs the red light or has over indulged before getting behind a wheel.  So it is that none of us really know our expiration date.

Those things said, while I’ve known that with each second that ticks off the clock I’m that much closer to end I’ve never really focused on it.  Yet, the reality of my own mortality has struck me in the face in the last few days in particular.

As a follower of Christ I have those promises the scripture offers concerning God’s eternal future.  I claim those promises for me and for those in my circle that have recently passed.  Even so, I will admit to a bit of brooding.

Then I did something, a small thing really but something that spoke volumes that lifted my brooding.  I mailed a marriage license.

Saturday evening I performed the wedding ceremony for a young couple.  The groom is a state trooper and the bride is completing vet school.  It was a nice wedding and all seemed to enjoy the celebration.  I had completed the marriage license Saturday evening and sent it to the appropriate authority today.

It was one of the mundane things that I sometimes do; however today it was more than that. That license to me was a bit of hope amidst the gloom.  It was a reminder that in the face of death life goes on.  In the book of Jeremiah we read of his purchase of real estate as the Babylonians were about to overrun the nation of Judah.  He did it as a sign of hope.  That marriage license like Jeremiah’s real estate purchase tells me that among the despair of life there is far more hope than despair.

That marriage license reminded me that yes life is finite but that is all the more reason that it must be lived.  The truth is that in the end we will all die.  The challenge is to keep on living until we do.