It is quite natural to think more deeply about the meaning of one’s life when death visits nearby! Such has been the content of many of my waking thoughts recently. Burying one’s father, at least for any thinking person, will bring the issues of purpose and significance into sharp focus. If the spiritual dimension is taken away, the outlook is grim, the only conclusion - despair. I am not the first to acknowledge this. Poets write of the futility of life. The timeless words of Shakespeare echo in my mind. His pessimism is never clearer than in these words he put in the mouth of Macbeth at the death of his wife: “Out, out brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Men wise in the ways of the world, accomplished in letters, find grappling with life’s purpose, difficult, too. Bertrand Russell, atheist philosopher from the 20th century, describes human significance, or more accurately, human insignificance, this way: “In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment. Within this tiny fragment the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and within the speck our planet Earth is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of carbon and water crawl about for a few years until they are dissolved back into the elements from which they are compounded.” (as quoted by John Ortberg, Faith and Doubt, Zondervan, 2008) Wow, doesn’t that make you want to jump with joy?
Even David, the poet king of ancient Israel, observed the vastness of the sky and wondered, “What is man?” But, he did not stop with despair or at the natural conclusion of the futility of life. Instead, he looked beyond the natural world and, in faith, connected the naturally inconsequential man with the One who created him and sang this song. "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" (Psalm 8:3-10, NIV)
Life’s ultimate meaning is not gained by our achievements! Meaning is a gift granted by the Creator who ‘crowns us with glory!’ Anything that you or I may do in this world – be it invention, artistic work, or accumulation of goods – cannot provide meaning beyond the moment. Eventually, likely even before we die, someone will do what we do better, faster, or with greater skill! The things we acquire through diligence will, in the words of Jesus, eventually be eaten by moths or rust or perhaps stolen away! But that which we do for God, those choices that flow out of obedience to His general and specific will for our individual lives, are eternal, surviving even when our body is laid in the ground!
“Prove that, Jerry! How do you know that what you’ve just written is true?” I cannot prove it. It is a choice of faith. Mine is not an irrational faith, nor is it a fantasy. I choose faith in a loving God because there is sufficient evidence for His existence written into the world in which I walk. From time to time, I sense His Presence, glimpse the outlines of Someone greater than time and space into which I am locked for the moment. Therefore, I serve Him. The life He gives to me as I exercise faith and practice obedience is meaningful. Ultimately, I ask myself, “So if you have chosen wrongly, what have you lost? Nothing! If those who reject faith and live only for themselves have chosen wrongly what have they gained? Nothing!
"Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.
All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:9-13, NLT)
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