The message of the dying

What do Ron Brown, Timothy Leary, Erma Bombeck, Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder, and former French President Francois Mitterrand all have in common?

Not a single one of them survived 1996.

As another year passes, we're all going to be treated to more remembrances of the celebrities who have died. This year, we've said goodbye to those like Audrey Meadows who made us laugh, and to those like 7-year-old pilot Jessica Dubroff who made us cry. We'll bid a final farewell to those like exiled Russian poet and Nobel prizewinner Joseph Brodsky who inspired us, and to those like flamboyant defense attorney Melvin Belli who tended to make us cynical.

The death of some, such as Harvard professor and LSD guru Timothy Leary, were not that shocking. The death of others--such as Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and actress Margaux Hemingway--were unexpected and sobering. It's one thing to see people expire in the waning years of their career. It's another thing to see them taken at their zenith.

William Law, the great 18th-century Anglican, wrote, "What message from heaven speak[s] louder to us than the daily dying and departure of our fellow creature does?" There is something about end-of-the-year obituaries that should cause us to review our own lives. Too often we live as if our tomorrows will never run out, but that's an illusion. Remembering our own mortality and inevitable death will help us to live better lives today, because the reality of death can sharpen our perspective and focus our priorities.

Back when George Bush was vice president representing the United States at the funeral of ex-Soviet head Leonid Brezhnev, he was profoundly moved by one of the most courageous acts of civil disobedience ever recorded in human history. As soldiers prepared to close the lid over Brezhnev's body, his grieving widow quickly reached out and made the sign of the cross on her departed husband's chest.

There in the citadel of atheistic power, Mrs. Brezhnev offered a desperate prayer that everything her husband stood for had been a lie, that there was an existence apart from this world, a realm of authority that goes beyond the idealistic efforts of men and women, a world that is entered only through the sacrificial death of a radical Jew who died 2,000 years ago.

Brezhnev expended all his efforts trying to create a utopia on earth while trying to stamp out any evidence of heaven. When he died, his wife hoped that he had been misguided.

Will death prove our own lives to be a waste, chasing after something that has no meaning once we're gone? When my body is being laid in the ground, will my wife be praying that God will have mercy and "overlook" my own ambitious efforts?

Most of us will have less ink spilled on our obituaries than that used to declare a one-day Sears clearance sale. But the Bible teaches us that what really matters is the ink written in the Book of Life, not that buried deep in the pages of The New York Times. If we've experienced salvation through Jesus Christ we have no reason to fear the reality that exists beyond death.

But neither should we forget or lightly dismiss that reality, because it is the sobering truth of death that will forever point us back to the only one who was able to conquer it. William Law wrote, "Feasts and business and pleasures and enjoyments seem great things to us whilst we think of nothing else; but as soon as we add death to them, they all sink into an equal littleness; and the soul that is separated from the body no more laments the loss of business than the losing of a feast."

As we say goodbye to national and international celebrities, let us also say goodbye to the illusion that we will live on this earth forever. Let's imagine what we will leave behind if, like so many, we fail to survive 1997. Do we need to make a change? Do we need to make some amends? Dare we risk living another unexamined year?

This sounds like a greeting card statement, but it's true: Today is yesterday's tomorrow. The time for changing, redirecting priorities, and making tough decisions is now. God hasn't absolutely promised a single one of us that there will be a 1998--at least not for us--so let's spend 1997 living a life that will have meaning long after our own obituaries have faded away.