A good reputation is more valuable than costly perfume.
And the day you die is better than the day you are born. Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties.
After all, everyone dies—
so the living should take this to heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us.
Ecclesiastes 7:1-3 NLT
As Christians the world over commemorate Ash Wednesday, I spent this morning at a funeral. A girl in my youth group saw her grandmother pass away recently and today family and friends gathered to remember her life.
As I listened to the pastor’s sermon, my mind wandered to Solomon’s wisdom in Ecclesiastes; that it is better to go to a funeral than to a party.
Death tells us more about life than celebration, but celebration feels more like life than death.
Death is reality, it forces us to confront our mortality; to look at today, not only as today, but potentially as our last day.
When we look at death, we see more clearly why we live. Death accentuates celebration; life becomes most sweet when the stench of death is remembered. Yes, death reminds us not only that we must someday die, but it also reminds us that today we must live.
But it is Ash Wednesday, and not everyone reading this will have been at the funeral I just attended. So what of death for the rest of us?
Ash Wednesday commemorates the death of God on a cross. When we reflect on the death of Jesus, we are reminded not only of our mortality, but of our mortal sin. Let Christ’s death remind you of the death of your sins. Let His death remind that today is a gift of His grace and that it should be celebrated.
Because while death is telling us more about life than celebration, it is also informing the celebration itself.
