Imagine heading to a restaurant for a celebration. You drive up and see and ambulance parked out front, silent but with lights flashing and uniformed people running about. You might think, 'I hope it wasn't the food'. On this particular evening though it is the chef, a 43 year old young family man, in seemingly good shape, who has simply dropped dead at the stove. It is a horribly sad scenario. He died doing what he loved and using the talent that gave joy to so many people.
Recently we had two guests at our home. One was quite rotund. The other almost frail but with other predilections, not food, it is somewhat psychological but gives the person a reliance on medications if not a bent towards abuse. With death on my mind from the poor chef ( a true story ), I think, which one of my guests might be the next to pass? Me of course but that does not suite my reflection. The man seems like a heart attack waiting to happen and if he dies it will be no surprise and his defining characteristics will have been lived up to. My other guest, should they pass accidentally from their considerable ignorance of good medication management and personal problems, will garner appropriate sympathy but will have also died in a defining characteristic of their life.
How we live and die is often noted. What makes a hero is someone whose life has been of service and they die in that place of devotion and service. A fireman who spends their life helping and saving others and dies becomes a hero for their defining life. So too for a physician healer or a religious healer like Mother Theresa. They are heroes who die in their lives defined by who and what they are, what they believe and how they live.
Today we remember holy man, perhaps saint, Thomas Merton. A holy man and hero. Even his death under bizarre circumstances did not take way his hero status, his defining life. But how will our own lives be defined? When we pass, and that can happen at any time as we are constantly reminded of by life, what will be remembered for? How will we be defined?
A person like Harvey Milk is remembered for his dedication to human rights, generally those associated with gay rights. He is a hero. What beliefs do we hold and actually live out in our lives that will call witness to those beliefs when we die? If we claim to be a faithful person, a person who lives out love, will people see and say that about you? Is that how you will be remembered? What are our defining characteristics and do we really live them out in our actions and lives? Are you a witness? My thoughts this morning.
Live well, pray hard.
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, ‘There is peace and security’, then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labour pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then, let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
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