An Ash Wednesday reflection on what matters most in life
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, described by the New York Times as America’s “most influential Black figure in the years between the civil rights crusades of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the election of Barack Obama,” died yesterday morning at the age of eighty-four. He was hospitalized last November with a severe neurodegenerative condition; his family said he “died peacefully.”
Rev. Jackson was with Dr. King when he was assassinated in 1968, eventually formed the National Rainbow Coalition, and ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Both times, he secured millions of votes in the primaries and delivered speeches at the Democratic National Conventions that electrified those in attendance. In 2000, President Clinton bestowed on him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor.
Another death making headlines this week was the passing of famed actor Robert Duvall at the age of ninety-five. He was especially known for his roles in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, and Tender Mercies (for which he won the Best Actor Oscar). He also starred in the TV miniseries Lonesome Dove; his costar Tommy Lee Jones said after his death, “Even though I have lost a friend, Bob’s work will be with us indefinitely.”
I appreciate his kind tribute, but let’s think about his words for a moment.
The eighty-six-year-old actor Ian McKellen recently told an interviewer, “I have accepted that I’m not immortal.” It is vital that you and I accept the same fact, for reasons that reveal what matters most in life.
When most people died of an infectious disease
Even if Jesse Jackson had been elected president of the United States, his earthly work would not have been immortal. As President George W. Bush noted in his Presidents’ Day tribute to Gen. George Washington, our first president’s humility in stepping down from office helped define that office. He also built a mansion at Mt. Vernon that I and millions of others have toured.
However, neither the nation he helped birth nor the mansion he constructed will stand forever.
Robert Duvall likewise acted in some of our most iconic films and will be seen in them long after his death, but his films will not live forever.
There was a time when we understood the fact of our mortality better than we do now. As Susan Wise Bauer reports in The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy, we are only four or five generations removed from a world where most people, most of the time, died of an infectious disease.
As examples, she discusses plague, typhus, smallpox, typhoid, influenza, polio, tuberculosis, dysentery, scarlet fever, cholera, measles, and malaria. The fact that medical science has defeated most of them does not make us any less mortal, a lesson the COVID-19 pandemic should have taught us.
There was also a time when we understood the temporality of our world better than we do now. But as I noted yesterday, materialism has convinced many that this world is all there is. Rather than using this life to prepare for the next, we ignore the latter and focus myopically on the former.
How death is like anesthesia
Could this be one reason God allows the reality of physical death? He could take us deathlessly from this world to the next, as he did with Enoch and Elijah. But he chooses to allow our bodies to die, in part to remind us of our finitude in the face of infinity and our mortality on the precipice of immortality.
When we die, we obviously have no agency by which to determine what happens to us next. At death, we are like a patient under anesthesia. What happens to us depends not on us, but on those who have power over us we no longer possess.
This fact should lead us to trust God not just with our lives beyond life but with our lives in this life.
As C. S. Lewis noted in Mere Christianity, humans were designed to depend on God as the “petrol” on which our “car” runs. Accordingly, he wrote, “It is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”
“Destinations of which the traveler is unaware”
How, then, are we to live most effectively for eternal purposes? I don’t know the answer for my own life, much less for yours.
The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber observed, “All journeys have destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” This is especially true with regard to God’s omniscient purposes for his people, plans our finite and fallen minds cannot fully comprehend (cf. Isaiah 55:8–9).
I would guess that Paul considered the individuals he won to Christ during his missionary journeys to be his most lasting legacy. His letters were “task theology” written to specific congregations and people for specific purposes. But it was these letters that became his global contribution to God’s eternal kingdom.
I would also guess that John thought his public ministry was over when he was exiled to Patmos. He had written a Gospel and three letters, so he presumably had no regrets. Accordingly, when he was worshiping Jesus “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s Day, he had no idea he would receive the Revelation that completed the New Testament (Revelation 1:10–20).
Our Father will lead us into our most impactful lives if we leave the choice with him. Every moment spent in his perfect will is obedience that echoes in eternity. If we choose to measure success in this world by significance for the next, and we ask Jesus to make our choice a reality, he will always answer our prayer.
“You became what you were not”
On this Ash Wednesday, as Christians around the world begin a season focused on Jesus’ suffering and death for us, we can join them in contemplating such sacrificial love. And we can respond by committing our lives to serving and glorifying such a Savior.
To this end, we can pray with Martin Luther:
“Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine, yet set on me what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not.”
How grateful are you for such grace today?
Quote for the day:
“A Christian knows that death shall be the funeral of all his sins, his sorrows, his afflictions, his temptations, his vexations, his oppressions, his persecutions. He knows that death shall be the resurrection of all his hopes, his joys, his delights, his comforts, his contentments.” —Thomas Brooks (1608–80)
Our latest website resources:
Denison Forum
DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION 