Today I am going to a Memorial service
for a young woman who had no business dying so young. I am not
preaching- I am only going to help out. I knew her and she was once a
member of the church in which I work, but she withdrew form the
church a few years back. Her life was filled with loss and she knew a
great deal of anguish.
I woke up this morning and in taking
the dog for a walk before I did my workout I found myself singing an
old ballad that I first heard Joan Baez sing a half century ago, “Banks of the Ohio”. I think I was sub -consciously
reminded of this song by the fact that the woman we will remember today had drowned in a canal. If
you remember, the song is about a young man who kills his love and
throws her body into the Ohio, one Lyric goes, “Oh Willie, don't
you murder me, I'm not prepared for eternity!”
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I don’t know if anyone is “prepared
for eternity”. There are days when I know that I am and there are
days when I want to put it off as long as possible. Most of the days
I think I am already living in eternity when I look around and see
the love and beauty around me and reflect that eternal life does not
begin after we die but right here and now-- it goes on at the same
time as the limited life we live each day. Eternity is when God is present.
Jesus tells us that he will provide a
place for us and that our names are already written in the book of
life. I think that it is a promise that while we may not be prepared
for eternity-- eternity is prepared for up and we get glimpses of it
through what the Celts called the “thin places” in our lives.
My prayer for today is that will have
the eyes to see through the thin places that God provides for me
today of living in eternity..
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