August 29, 2003

Facing Inevitability

If it often said that two things in life are inevitable, death and taxes. However, the difference between the two is that only Enoch and Elijah ever evaded death. And unlike the Isle of Man and the Channel Isles, there's no place on earth to be a "death exile".

I spend a lot of time thinking about death - mostly my own. Perhaps it is telling that my favourite Psalm is the one I am learning to refer to as 89, but as a Protestant always knew as 90, where Moses writes such things as:

The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knows the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath. So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

I despair, however, because I am ever numbering my days, but never gaining wisdom. I still fritter them away. Yet, I almost always moan to myself that I've lost yet another day and produced nothing of value for it. I think of all the time I've had off work and the substantive things I could have done with it. There is nothing to show.

I fear death. This is in part because of what is waiting on the other side. Knowing my life of complete unholiness, I dread the Judgment Seat. But I also dread missing anything going on here on this side of the veil. Even in a general since, I am sad to think that the world will go on without me. I don't want to miss anything. More specifically, I don't want to miss any part of Aidan's life. And especially if anything happened to both Mrs H and myself, he wouldn't be brought up in the Orthodox Church.

I lack faith that God will keep him and preserve him. Lord, help my unbelief. Let me stay around to raise him, but help my unbelief.

Posted by david at August 29, 2003 10:47 PM | TrackBack
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