We often hear how people who have been at death’s door but recovered live life differently. I wonder if Hugo Chavez was changed by his long struggle with cancer. “Momento Mori, remember death,” was the wisdom of ancient Romans. Whether we recover or not, our coming journey through the valley of the shadow of death should change the way we face others. Of course, many things get in the way. Youth is one. When a high school student is tragically killed in an auto accident, it is a shocking intrusion of mortality into assumptions of invincibility. In the middle seasons of life, the pressing routines of work and family back us into the corner of coping, of getting by with no leisure for Momento Mori. “Others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the Word, but the cares of life and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things come in and choke the Word and it is unfruitful.”
To interact with others for God is a different thing than using others to get worldly power, Mr. Chavez, or climbing the ladder in your profession, church life included. God’s claim upon us means putting to death our natural ways. Life becomes service to others and not service to self, whatever the season of your life. “But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the Word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” (Mark 4:18-20) Maybe the difference in productivity for God is how early we start in life and how faithfully we tend the Word sown in our hearts day-by-day. “We were buried with Christ by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the death by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4) Momento Mori, today.
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