February 22 2023
Ash Wednesday
Begin with the end in mind.
Perhaps you've heard that phrase before. It comes from the very popular book, 7
Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. Begin with the end in mind is habit number two. And when this idea
is introduced in the book, Covey lays out a particular scenario for the reader
to consider. Imagine yourself, he writes, going to the funeral of a loved one.
Picture yourself dressing up for it, driving to the funeral in your car, and
getting out. You walk into a crowded room, approach the casket, look down at
the body, and discover that it’s you! This is your funeral five years from now.
You pick up a bulletin and read there that
there will be four speakers: a family member, a dear friend, a work
colleague, and a member of your church or some other group you were a part of.
Now think deeply, the book counsels. Think deeply as you ask yourself some
questions.What would each speaker say about you? What kind of person were you
to each one of them? What type of character do you hope they saw in you? What
difference do you hope you made in their lives and in the life of this world?
The answers that come up are important because they can help you get in touch
with what really matters and provide a way to live going forward. Begin with the end in mind.
Not bad advice.
But way before Covey made millions off this piece of advice in his book there
was another, Benedict of Nursia, who basically had the same idea that he wrote
down in his book, The Rule of St. Benedict, roughly 1,500 years earlier. Who
knows, maybe Covey read it, because countless people have. The Rule of St.
Benedict has shaped lives, particularly Christian lives, throughout the globe
and down through the centuries. Among many perils of wisdom found within is one
where the reader is given this counsel, Day
by day remind yourself that you are going to die.
This isn’t
written with the intent to depress the reader. We are not to revel in the idea
of our deaths. However there is a paradox here, a holy mystery really. As we
remind ourselves, day by day, that we are going to die instead of weighing us
down, it can actually bring a lightness to our lives. A lightness because it
enables us to release so many burdens that we so often carry when we live in
denial of this truth. Remembering every day that we will eventually die has the
power to teach us how to really live. For then we know beyond a shadow of a
doubt that the day to love God, the day to repair relationships, the day to
help someone in need, the day to work for justice, the day to bless the world
is this day - today. Tomorrow does not come with a guarantee. Psalm 118 puts it
this way, “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad
in it.” (v.24)
Unlike Stephen
Covey’s exercise that imagines our funeral as our final end, that is not our
story. As Christians, when we contemplate our mortal life and remind ourselves
of our death our lives and our deaths are enfolded in a much bigger story, a
much bigger life that goes way beyond our own. The lives we live here on earth
ever so briefly - days filled with joys and sorrows, yes, but mostly filled
with a lot of ordinariness - those days find their meaning and purpose in God’s
eternal life and God’s eternal love. A life and love that is revealed to us in
Jesus the Christ. The one who became human. The one who experienced what it was
like to wake up in the morning, go to sleep in the evening, to fill one’s day
with work and chores, friends and family, laughter and tears, and all the rest.
The one who knew suffering and death and ultimately resurrected life so that we
too might experience that fullness of life in this world and the next.
Remembering and
accepting our mortality enables us to learn, day by day, how to truly live in
Christ, through Christ, and with Christ. We are empowered to let go of the
things that don’t really matter - our wealth, our strength, our
accomplishments, all of them fleeting. And instead to turn more and more
intentionally towards what really matters and what ultimately lasts - grace,
mercy, generosity, goodness, love.
Because when you
imagined your own funeral moments ago, aren’t those things along the lines of
what you hoped that some generous people would remember about you? The ways
that you touched other lives for good? The positive impact you made on this world?
In essence, how your life was able to reflect God’s goodness and love in this
world?
If so, Begin with the end in mind. Day by day remind yourself that you are
going to die. And that it’s ok. Take to heart the ancient words that will
be spoken over you as the sign of the cross, the sign of God’s unending life
and never-failing love is made upon your forehead, Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Remember
and live.
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