A few Sundays ago we had picture day—the day we take updated photographs for the church directory. Aileen and I were overdue to have our photo taken and, for the first time in 26 years, it was just the two of us. Over the years, our directory photos climbed from two people to three, then four, then five, before they began to recede to four, three, and now just two. I wish I had kept all of those photos because in so many ways they tell the story of our lives.
Just the other day, Aileen asked, “Don’t you find that life seems to go faster as we get older?” I do. Somehow the speed at which time passes seems to accelerate with the years. When I look back, my childhood and teenage years seem to have stretched on forever, while my forties passed in a blink. There are days of summer when the sun rises early and sets late, and we get more than 15 hours of daylight. There are days of winter when the sun rises late and sets early, and we get less than 8 hours of daylight. Life now seems more like a winter day than a summer day, passing quickly and fading early.
I have never grown accustomed to the sheer brevity of life. Though the filling of our home and its emptying were separated by decades, it seems like they took place within days of one another. Receiving our girls from the hands of their midwives and releasing them to the hands of their husbands seems to have happened seconds apart. It sometimes feels like Aileen began to rock Nick’s cradle with one hand and began to tend to his grave with the other, like these were simultaneous instead of sequential, divided by more than 20 years. Life truly is fleeting.
But the fleetingness of life does not need to negate the joys of life. Yes, there is something tragic about time elapsing toward an inevitable end. There is something difficult about living each day knowing that our days will end, that as each one passes, we are one day closer to the grave. But we are still responsible before the Lord to make the most of each one, and making the most of them requires enjoying them. We cannot live well when we live in despair, and we cannot live well when we refuse to rejoice in life’s many delights.
We cannot live well when we live in despair, and we cannot live well when we refuse to rejoice in life’s many delights.
As those who have followed Christ, we have the privilege of looking beyond the end of our time on this earth. Peter ran to Christ’s tomb, stooped, looked in, and saw the linen cloths folded and set aside. In that moment he saw the resurrection and all that it entailed. We, too, need to look into Christ’s grave, and as we do so, it becomes like a window that opens our view to all that lies beyond it. In Christ’s empty grave we see the end of death and the beginning of life everlasting. In Christ’s empty grave we see life in which time elapses toward greater joys rather than diminishing ones, and toward greater pleasures rather than reduced ones. In Christ’s empty grave we see life that only ever begins and never ends.
So we truly can live with joy even amid the sorrow of life’s inevitable ebbing. We can live with hope and meaning even as our days pass away. We can live each day as if it matters, knowing that the end of life simply ushers in a new and better beginning. We can live with joy knowing that our days here and our days there are forever connected through the empty grave of Christ Jesus.
Inspired in part by the sermons of De Witt Talmage
