A Better Day

A Better Day

The day you die is better than the day you are born. –Ecclesiastes 7:1

Birthdays. Deathdays. I feel like they are always coming at me. And it is hard to know what to do with these days when you have lost someone you love, isn’t it? Letting them just go by doesn’t seem right, and yet it can be so hard to work up the energy just to get out of bed, let alone do something constructive or meaningful.

When Hope’s and Gabe’s birthdays come around, I can usually find some way—sometimes very small and sometimes more significant—to celebrate their lives. I’m grateful they were here if for only a short time, so I can find joy in that. I celebrate the impact they had on other people, even with their significant limitations and the brevity of their lives, and I’m grateful. I remember the joy and richness they each brought to our lives and the gifts they gave us in the form of a deeper understanding of God and deeper relationships with people around us.

But those deathdays are hard. Or, I should say, it is the anticipation of the deathdays that is hard. For me, the day itself is not so bad. It is the days leading up to it, as I have a sense that death is coming again and I can’t stop it. I feel a sense of dread and helplessness. Finding a way to “celebrate” a day of death seems absolutely ridiculous and almost like a denial of reality. But is it? Perhaps it is the ultimate embracing of reality.

On the day we are born, we enter a pain-saturated, sin-scarred, darkness-loving, soul-depriving existence for a determined number of years. On the day of our death, if we are believers, we enter a pain-free, perfect place that is ablaze with the glory of Christ, where our deepest longings and joys are fulfilled, not for a number of years, but forever. Think about it. Don’t dismiss it because of how much you miss someone who is there or because of your fears of the unknown. Allow this truth to ruminate in your heart and illumine your mind. For you, and for the one you love who knows Christ, won’t your deathday be your true birthday?

Lord of life, really believing this requires a radical readjustment to my perspective about this life and the next. Renew my mind and emotions so I can see life on this earth and in eternity with you in proper perspective.

DIGGING DEEPER