I Found Myself in a Cemetary Today

I found myself in a cemetary today.

Last year at Mundelein Seminary I could just have easily said: "I found myself in a seminary today."

- "...Not funny, boo!"

Thanks for keeping me honest, faithful blog reader.

But seriously there I was today sitting on a bench in a cemetary. I was in a place of hope.

Now, yes, cemtaries are places of sadness, grieving, and the like.  But I'm a Christian.  I don't believe death is the end.  If it is the end then everything that exists is absurd - even your reading of this blog.

But we know - if we're honest - that deep down our most intense aspirations for eternal life are not absurd.  What is absurd, I think, is how seldom we consider the fact that one day we will die.

One day you will die.

It could be tomorrow.  It could.  

Ask someone who works in an Emergency Room at a hospital how uncertain tomorrow is...they'll tell you.  They see it all the time.  They see life end all the time.

How often do you consider your eventual death? I don't mean to be morbid.

Considering the end of our lives on earth helps us grow in wisdom; helps us see things more as God sees them.  Suffering can do that, too.  Or one could become bitter through it.  That only happens if one has lost hope.

At the cemetary today I sat and listen to a soccer game going on a few hundred feet away just beyond the cemetary walls.  It was ironic to me that a place of such liveliness could be so close to a place where the dead are laid to rest.  Often, we seek to distract ourselves with some amusement.  But how often do we forsake our distractions for the sake of not becoming distracted from the most important things in life.

For example, I will die someday.

Does that thought make you smile?  If you have hope I think it should.  In hope we know that death is not the end.  It's a door.  In Jesus death, God entered through the door of death so that when we ourselves eventually enter through that door we would not be alone. In Jesus' resurrection and ascension, God linked death to eternal life so that when we die in   friendship with God we are able to follow the path traced out for us by Christ - all the way to Heaven.

So, I found myself in a cemetary today.  You, too, will someday find yourself in a cemetary.  

I hope that happens before you die.

-MM