A little over a year ago I sat in a doctors office while he told me rather calmly that he had discovered a bit of a 'balloon' growing on my aorta, right by the valve in an unusually nasty spot. Quite a miracle to my way of thinking that it was discovered at all. It was of sufficient size on its discovery to require prompt attention. And so the preparations began. Not quite serious enough to send me immediately to the hospital but large enough to make the immediate preparations. Scary. Fucking scary. Please excuse me.
The waiting for surgery was several weeks of knowing that at any given moment I could almost literally explode and be placed immediately before my Creator to face up to how I lived or didn't love. All very sobering.
We all know we are going to die. For most of us that fact is ignored or like youthful exuberance we pretty much think it doesn't exist. As we get older we gets a foretaste of death in loved ones and friends who disappear after having graced and touched our lives. The pain is often palpable. From this we can certainly understand the humanity and heartache of Jesus when he knew he'd being saying goodbye to his own mom, his closest friends and his apostles. He was saying goodbye to Lazarus who is the subject of today's scripture reading. It is all about death and life. We know all about the saying good byes that we must endure or at least begrudgingly embrace.
What do we know of living? What is it to live? Fear of death? I'd easily refer you to watch Moonstruck, a great movie all by itself. But in that movie Olympua Dukakis asks why do men cheat? The answer is 'because they fear death'.
Living has to be more about fearing death. Life has to be more than just knowing about death but living fully in the light. That light is not simply 'Jesus the light'. The light is living as Jesus did, as he shows us. That means living each moment in the present. It means living each moment with exuberance and passion. It means living a life so full, so full of meaning, that when death does come we are not afraid or full of regrets.
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