Memento Mori

Today, at lunch with Bekah, I was complaining about the way a certain group of church leaders had conducted their ministries. Yeah, I know, judging another man's servant and all, I take the rebuke. Anyway, when I was done Bekah looks at me and says, "They'll be dead one day." It's a good thing I wasn't drinking my soda at the time or I would have spit it out from laughing so hard. Anyone who knows Bekah only a little bit would never believe that she would joke like this, but those of us that know her better get to see that her humor isn't as far off from the rest of our group as she would let people think.

The thing is, it made me think about the truth to what she said. We will all be dead one day, the things that bother and worry us now won't matter so much then. There is a Latin phrase that goes memento mori. Roughly it means, "Remember that you will die." Early Christians used to use it to remind themselves that if something doesn't matter after death then most likely it just doesn't matter at all.

I'm not proposing a world view that only sets it's sights on heaven and ignores the injustice and suffering on earth, on the contrary, if we take this phrase the way it's meant to be understood, then suffering and injustice become one of the things that do matter, but only in the way they effect eternity. Thus our own suffering means less and that of others means more.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the things around me I forget that one day a lot of this isn't going to matter. At the funeral last week, I got a glimpse of what you leave after you're gone. The lives you've touched whether for good or bad, and the people that you loved as well as those who have loved you.

All this may sound random, but I'm still in the process mode with this thing so forgive me if I regress.

In other news, I'm going to be adding another blog to my links section. My beautiful wife has started a blog called, Autumn's Daily Tidbits. She's an awesome woman, but please don't take the things she says about me too seriously. It should be up tonight sometime, but right now my kids want me to take them for a walk.