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Dying for Meaning a thought from Ecc. 7

Ecclesiastes 7:1-2 (NIV)
A good name is better than fine perfume,
and the day of death better than the day of birth.
2 It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,


This passage by the master teacher of Ecclesiastes offers a thought that is counter intuitive. We like life and enjoy living. There are many stories of people who will undergo chemotherapy, the loss of a limb and organ transplant surgery in order to continue living. We will fight to live another day. This is a good thing. It is a God given desire placed in humans. We have taken a wrong turn when we turn our back on life. The general sense of this passage offers a sobering reminder that one day you will die and the living should take that to heart. Life is a precious gift. This is something that those who have faced their own mortality know all too well. Death has a way of waking us up to the meaning of life.

The month of June is always an odd month for me. My father passed away a few years ago in the month of June and it is also the month to celebrate Father’s Day. My father contracted esophageal cancer. By the time an official diagnoses was made doctors gave my father about a year to live. It was a very long year. My father loved music. He was a trained singer who had performed with the Robert Shaw Chorale in Atlanta and was also the professor of music at a small Christian college in East Point GA. Eventually the cancer took away my father’s ability to sing. The local choir that my father led came over to the house one evening. They stood outside in the back yard and sang some wonder hymns and period pieces. It was a very touching moment. After the choir members finished singing they came over and said a few words to my Mom and Dad. This was not a morbid or sad moment instead it was a moment totally infused with meaning.

This is what the master teacher of Ecclesiastes is pointing out. How would you live your life knowing that your life could be gone at anytime? According to Ecclesiastes our own mortality should be the smelling salts that call us back to real life. How do we relate to the experiences and stuff of life differently knowing that sooner or later we will face death? House a total mess and frustrated with cleaning? Always worried about your money? Consumed with your looks? Your children said something hurtful? Is your spouse distant and cold? The master teacher wants us to know that life is a very precious gift that could be gone at any moment. Perhaps grasping what a great gift life is that could be gone at any moment it might open us up to real living.

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