Momento Mortem

Meet Oscar.

Oscar dwells ("lives" is a bit too rosy of a term for him) on an upper shelf in Miss Elisabeth's study, which adjoins my bedroom. I promise you that on especially dark evenings, Oscar slips down from the shelf and opens the door to the study just to make me nervous. I try to always keep it closed after the sun sets, which, of course, has nothing to do with Oscar.

...Or maybe it does...

But at any rate, I think Oscar and I appreciate each other best from a distance. (FYI, I guess Miss Elisabeth got him from someone while overseas and he is very, very old; hundreds of years.) Sometimes I stare at his perpetually grinning face up there and think about who he was. It gives me the chills to think that this is not some plastic Halloween skeleton head from Wal Mart. Oscar once was a breathing, laughing, crying, thinking, sorrowing, eating, talking human being from Ecuador. Someone's son, someone's friend, maybe someone's dad. He had opinions about things and he felt deeply. Now, he (or rather his head) sits completely forgotten on a shelf in Massachusetts.

Sheesh! Poor Oscar.

(Then again I suppose that if my skull HAS to be put on a shelf some day instead of receiving a proper burial, I'd be honored to be on the shelf of someone like Miss Elisabeth.) All this to say, that I've been thinking a lot about death lately. Now, you know me to well to think that I've got some unhealthy obsession so bear with me. Miss Elisabeth called Oscar her "momento mortem;" her "memory of death", and so I don't think she'd call my thoughts morbid or unhealthy. In Psalm 39:4, David prayed this:

O Lord, make me know my end

and what is the measure of my days;

let me know how fleeting I am!

In other words, it's Scriptural to think about death and it's utterly foolish not to. Think about the truth that every single thing you are working towards, every thing you say, every relationship you make, every goal, every dollar, every possession, every ambition, every EVERYTHING will die one day and won't matter a bit. You will not only cease to live on earth; you will cease to matter on earth. No one cares about who Oscar is anymore. No one cares much that his head is on a shelf (well, besides for me, apparently.) So it will be with you and I, some day. I lay in bed some times and think about that. I think about the fact that my body WILL be dead and lifeless some day. Stuffed in a coffin and buried. The hair that I try to style so carefully, the face I try to preserve, the stomach I try to keep flat, will be a decaying shell. (Am I creeping you out? I'm sorry. But I'm not really trying to be tactful and delicate because death is not a tactful or delicate reality.) James 4:14 puts it this way:

You do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

So what is there? What is the only thing in my existence that matters at ALL? You could say kindness and love shown to others, but really that will fail when they die so, no not really. The only thing that matters is GOD and MY RELATIONSHIP TO HIM. So I see, when I ponder that, that GOD is the reason I am alive. He is the creator of life and He is the only valid purpose for anything I do. It is only things that are done for God that will last. It is only my relationship with God that means ANYTHING, because when I die, as my body is decaying my soul will be more alive than I've ever been, standing before Almighty God, and suddenly I'll realize that THIS is what my short stint on earth was all about.

Sometimes I want to shake people around me and scream at them to wake up. To stop placing Jesus Christ on the back burner of their lives because He is all that matters and they are nothing. They are a mist. Their lives will end and this short opportunity they had on earth will be squandered because they did not use it to worship the God who created them for Himself. 2 Peter 3:11-

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved,

what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and Godliness?

I just wanted to share this because it lies heavily on my heart and I don't know if perhaps, someone who reads this post will need a wake-up-call like I've been getting lately. Think about death. Think about YOUR death. And prepare for it. Then and ONLY then will you discover the amazing joy and fufilment of truly living for the purpose you were made for!!

Oh God, open our eyes! Don't let us waste our lives, because it's only a tiny sliver of a moment that we have to prepare for the rest of eternity!