Melancholy

                A year ago we bought a pair of Green Singing Finches.  While I’ve enjoyed their cheery presence in our home, they haven’t truly lived up to their name.  Then last week I found the female finch on the floor of their birdcage, lifeless.  I wondered what effect her death would have on her mate.  Instead of becoming even quieter and morose, Atticus has taken to singing like we’ve never heard him sing before.

It’s been a melancholy spring for me.  I can’t pinpoint why, exactly.  The dreary weather?  The impending divorce of two people we love?  The tragic death of the young daughter of two college friends?  In this season of liveliness and beginnings, I’ve been listless and preoccupied with endings.

            Why do we avoid talking about death?  Death, I’ve heard said, has become the modern-day pornography of polite conversation.  Anything – and I mean anything – is open to discussion, as long as that one subject is avoided.  Why, I wonder?  Death is the common reality that each of us faces.  Where are you right now?  At home?  In the public library?  Sitting along the street?  Look around you.  In 100 years, you and every person around you will no longer be here.  Each of us is part of the ultimate statistic: 10 out of 10 people die.  We’re surrounded by death.  We experience its presence within our bodies.  Yet we live in denial of its certainty.

             Do you fear death?  The Bible tells us that Christ has overcome that last great enemy (I Corinthians 15:57).  For those who are in Jesus, death will be like falling asleep.  It’ll be like when you were a child, riding home late night.  There you sit, watching the twinkling lights of farmhouses pass by, closing your eyes to the blaring headlights of oncoming traffic, and, then, all of the sudden, Dad is tugging on your arm, and you realize, there you are, home.  Mozart, in a letter to his father, put it this way: “Death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence.  I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity to learn, Father, that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.  I never lie down at night without reflecting that, young as I am, I may not live to see another day.  For this blessing, I daily thank my Creator, and with all my heart, wish that each of my fellow creatures could enjoy it.”  Evangelist D.L. Moody said, “Someday you will read in the papers that Moody is dead. Don't you believe a word of it.  At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now.” 
         
          That’s how it’s going to be for me.  I can face today and this weary world with the knowledge that my living is not in vain, for my Lord lives (I Corinthians 15:58).  And someday, though my body may return to the ground for a time, my spirit will go to Him that gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7).  Like Atticus, death – though it will be my death, not that of another – will free the song inside me.

Someday maybe you'll open the Press and read there my obituary, and the date that I died.

Don’t you believe it.

I will be more alive at that moment
than I have ever been.