Approaching Death

"It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart."
Ecclesiastes 7:2

"Intellectually we all know that we will die but we do not know it in the sense that the knowledge becomes a part of us. We do not really know it in the sense of living as though it were true. On the contrary, we tend to live as though our lives would go on forever."
Frederick Buechner

Now this could be depressing, all this talk about death. That generally hasn't been my experience though. My last year at the Naval Academy there were two final capstone classes for my English major that we could choose between. One was called "Laughter and Love" and the other was called "The Literature of Death and Dying". I remember my friend took the first one and I took the second one. It was so funny to hear him talk about how completely and utterly boring the class was. He would tell me about people falling asleep and drooling on themselves. On the contrary I always had funny stories of how much my class actually laughed and enjoyed the reading and dicussions we had. Taking that class definitely taught me that avoiding the topic of death is not the best way of dealing with it. There was always a sense of freedom in the classroom to have the much-avoided topic out in the open and it seemed that the more we talked about death, the more the preciousness of life was realized and cherished.

I am convicted by Frederick Buechner's quote above. The knowledge of my coming death is not a part of me. It does not shape the way I live. Francis Chan included the above quotes in his book and he said that every time he preaches he reminds himself that it could be his last time preaching so that he doesn't hold anything back or water down the truth of God's Word. I can see this in his preaching as he definitely does not hide the extremity of the Gospel's call on our lives but rather emphasizes it. Since first reading the quotes, I kept reminding myself of the fact that today could be my last day. I have be honest, it definitely makes life more exciting! I tend to do things and go places in my conversations with people that I wouldn't go otherwise. A few days after reading the quotes in Francis Chan's book, I wrote this entry in my journal.

July 6th, 2008
"A few entries ago I wrote about living in the knowledge of coming death. I'm writing again because I'm already experiencing so much freedom in this mindest. Even just worshipping at church this morning in light of the fact that it could be my last time was so freeing. It wasn't depressing. Rather, it made me not want to hold back. I didn't worry about things later today or later this week. I just wanted to give all to Jesus now and be in love with Him. Hallelujah! Approaching death with nothing to fear!"