Over the course of just under four weeks, three people who had a real place in my life died. One after a lengthy battle with a cruel cancer; one from a previously undetected heart condition; one instantly, while watching television, from an aneurysm that burst in the brain. The first I met in 1995 while studying in Spokane, Washington. The second I was introduced to by a friend back around 1966 in my hometown of Milwaukee. The third came into my life about ten years ago here in Denver. I participated in two of the funerals; the third was overseas. Death has been more central to my awareness these days.

Since a diagnosis of an unpredictable and aggressive form of cancer five years ago though, death has been closer by. Naturally, pushing into the late seventies tends to make for a shrinking circle of friends and acquaintances. The question is how to walk side-by-side with this inevitable companion. 

We know, in our heads, from a very early age that death comes sooner or later to complex living creatures. But we don’t apply this physical fact to our complicated selves. Death is always someone else’s deal. What are we avoiding? What’s the fear in this? My guess is our dread of the great unknown. What’s going to happen to me after I die?

People of faith are invited to live fully in reference to life as it unfolds each moment. Yet many of us live, probably unconsciously, in reference to death. We can spend our days running as fast as we can to fill up our ears, eyes, minds, time with noise, distraction, busyness, so we don’t need to face our mortality. We might run countless marathons, pump iron, inundate our system with supplements. Death is quite patient. We can do all the makeup, botox, lifts of various body parts, plastic surgery to try to appear to keep a step ahead of death. “Can’t you see how young we are? Death must be years away! Right?”

Jesus, becoming one with us in all things (except sin, St. Paul adds), embraced our whole cycle from conception and birth to death – a particularly horrific death at that. He’s gone before us, believing, trusting that Abba-God had more for us than this  – Life beyond life. So, the passage might be a bit rough, but what’s in store for us is an eternal loving embrace in communion with all we have loved, somehow continuing to assist others who are still on the way. Death never is the last word.

Christmas season and New Year are ripe for wonder and pondering. Beneath all the commerce and marketing overlays lie unfathomable questions. We celebrate newness and unimaginable gift. But what do we do with these treasures – if we recognize them at all?

Every day, every moment is new, never before experienced. And we are new also. What has been is not all we are. We have fresh possibilities to explore, if we are awake and aware. Do we have our eyes open to see them?

Grace infuses time and place. God has entered and permeated all creation. The slow, persistent, nearly invisible work of transformation moves on – despite us if necessary. But we can do our part to advance God’s Kingdom through our choices and actions for the good of all.

Grace is pure and simple gift, given, waiting for our response. We might refuse, ignore, ridicule, reluctantly accept, try to exchange for something we imagine to be better, or we might wholeheartedly welcome gift, using it joyfully and well. We are continually offered gifts of all types, shapes, sizes. 

 If we live one day or one hundred and two years that lifespan is given for us to learn, to grow, to make life better. But we are free to waste the gift of our life, or worse, to pledge allegiance to respectable evil. In some small way, the choice is ours.

Nothing is owed to us. Not today. Nor tomorrow. We need to make good use of whatever opportunities we are given. And if we make plans, we would do well to not hang on to them too tightly.