Casey and I had a wonderful long weekend in upstate NY. I dropped him off at the university where he was teaching at 7:30 that first morning and felt almost guilty driving away, to where I didn’t know, in our big, fancy rental car, with nothing before me but a glorious October morning, a forecasted high of 80 degrees, a stack of books and my camera.
After a good latte and an update from the home front (I
needed to warn them I’d accidentally put rocks in the muffins), I found myself
driving through the stately entrance of a civil war era cemetery, enchanted
with the showers of leaves raining down like golden confetti in the warm
morning light.
And the music! The wind rustling the leaves, gently bidding them loose their hold from the branches that have held them since spring, to dance one last time on the wings of the wind before they settle on the ground, to die, to be returned to the earth, to enable new life in the spring. It was magical.
I have always liked cemeteries. They are peaceful, mysterious places, full of names and little snippets of the stories of lives gone before. The number of stones marking the resting place of beloved babies and little children makes me thankful for the time in which we live, a time of antibiotics and sound medical procedures. My great-grandparents buried their only son at 13 months due to lack of penicillin. My grandma says her daddy never got over it, always wished that one of his three little girls had been born a boy instead. Cemeteries remind us of our humanity.
It is good to ponder death. I am thankful to have fellow pilgrims around me to remind me that true life happens only by dying, on multiple levels. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's words arouse the ache in one's soul for that "final road to freedom."
“No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no
one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick
from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from
bodily existence.
Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are
twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how
near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it
ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the
curtain goes up—that is for young and old alike to think about.
Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to
people who believe in him…. it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we
realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the
everlasting kingdom of peace.
Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed
by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform
death.”
As a follower of Christ, I am called to death of self daily. Been chewing recently on these words of the Apostle Paul,
"For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."
To know nothing except Jesus Christ, crucified. The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. (2 Corinthians).
I'll admit, sometimes I think, and often do I act, as though the word of the cross is foolishness. Rarely do I choose to know nothing but my Lord and his crucifixion. Because to really know him in his death on the cross means that I have to really believe that the putting to death of me is good and right and wisdom and life!, and my flesh fights hard to convince me all does not need to be crucified. If fights to convince me there are good desires in me, worthy desires, God-given even, that deserve to be fought for.
How little I understand the Gospel, this foolishness. How often I shop the wisdom of the world for something more palatable, not quite so extreme, so harsh, as laying it all down. Of dying till I'm good and dead.
And yet I've tasted the life that comes on the other side. I know this is truth. Throughout all of God's creation we have examples of the necessary death that paves the way for new life. Glorious life.
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