Teach Us to Number Our Days

Every day on the subway on my way to university I pass by this cemetery, Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and in the morning it looks so beautiful from outside: the sunlight going through the trees and people are walking through it. It looks peaceful so I decided last summer to visit it and take some pictures. I visited it on a beautiful summer evening but I didn’t take any pictures because the awareness of death’s reality and ugliness was all around me. (I only took one picture on my way out.) So I decided to visit the cemetery again but this time not to photograph its natural beauty but I wanted to capture the reality of death. I settled for this capture because as sure as the yellow and white lines separate so our souls will leave our bodies one day.

Death is one of the most misrepresented facts of life. People die, and next we see their faces full of make-up, dressed in their best attire in shinny coffins, surrounded by beautiful smelling flowers. Then people sing religious songs, and tell of how a great person he or she were. We see that all the time on TV: it doesn’t matter how bad the person was after he dies people only say how kind, thoughtful, and how he was always thinking about others and putting them before his interests. May be because we see ourselves in that person: we know we are not living the lives we are supposed to and we know that one day we are going to die leaving behind us terrible or mediocre memories. So we decide to instead to glorify that person hoping the same will be done to us. The media does even a better job at covering the brutal, sad and ugly reality of death. In action movies tens of people get shot, fly in the air from the “impacts” of the bullets and explosions, and in the next scene all the dead bodies have disappeared without a trace of blood! But in reality death doesn’t disappear—our physical bodies and everything temporary (which is pretty much most of what we do) we built disappears.

Teach us to number our days by Fadi

So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom. ~Psalm 90:12

When it comes to death I like the words of Paul Washer who said something to the like, “You graduate, then what? Meet that special one and get married, then what? You work hard and climb the corporate ladder and purchase your first home, buy cars, and have kids, then what? Your kids grow up, graduate and get married and have kids, then what? You retire and enjoy life, then what? You die, then what?” And this is the shocker: death is not the end. What about after death? The Bible says,

“Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” Hebrews 9:27

I like Paul Washer’s words about death because we live on earth like it is our final destination. We worry about our lives here of how to pay the bills, what to wear and where to go. Yet our lives here won’t be more than few decades which wouldn’t mean anything in comparison to our lives after death. Funny we usually plan for death with life insurance and this and that. Some people even plan their funerals. Other are scared of the idea of dying and try to delay it, as if they can, as much as possible. However, death is nothing more than a gate from the earthly life to the afterlife. I think it would be wiser spending time planning this life to have a better afterlife than worrying about death itself. That’s like not giving much thought to studying or preparing for the exam, but worrying about the bus ride to the exam! Imagine how silly we would be if we spent a lot of timing planning our entrance to the court but spent very little time of gathering evidences or preparing to present our case to the judge!

Just the thought of standing in front of Almighty Jehovah God–the sole and absolute creator and ruler of everything that’s seen and unseen, and knowing that year after year I had ignored His will for my life, Sunday after Sunday I have refused to serve Him, day after day I had procrastinated to pray to Him, and minute after minute I had failed to worship and praise Him—sends fear and despair through my heart.

When I was a child in Iraq my grandmother used to tell me a story (probably fictional) about a saint who was initially a prince whose wife was very beautiful whom he adored very much. One day as he was on a hunting trip he got the news that his wife was very sick and is dying. He quickly journeyed back to see his wife. When he arrived he found out that she had been dead for few days and he was shocked by how ugly her face looked. And the story goes that he became a devote Christian monk after his wife’s death. May be it is just a story but its implication is so true: if we live our lives aware of the fact we are going to die one day we wouldn’t live our lives the way we do.

We lust as if those physical bodies are going to stay like this forever not realizing what an ugly and disgusting corpse we will make. We take care of our physical bodies and looks, and hair and clothes and this and that, and we judge others by their looks, laugh at them secretly, and call them ugly. We don’t realize that we will have to give an account for those evil thoughts and acts based on the physical. All that while our proud bodies will sooner or later become a rotten corpse end up in a tight space eaten by worms under a rock, and people will be running or taking photos (like me!) just few meters away!

It doesn’t matter how impressive your achievements in life are people will forget you and will remember you only a once or twice a year by going through the photo albums! And even if you are a famous scientist like Isaac Newton who left a legacy that millions of people remember him every day centuries after his death, so what? You will be dead! What people say about you or write on your tombstone won’t matter; the only thing that will matter is what God things of you. I believe, the most important questions after we die will be, “What have we done with Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Did we accept Him or reject Him? Did we believe in Him or scoffed at Him?”

S. C. Lewis said, “If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a ‘wandering to find home,’ why should we not look forward to the arrival?” Somehow we don’t look forward to the arrival, death, as a way to reach home—we see death as home and we live as such. Of course, it is must easier to live life as if there are no eternal consequences or giving an account for our lives. But denying something doesn’t make it go away. Death was here before you were born and is staying on earth for a long time afterward, the question is: Are you ready to face the God of the Bible after you die? I know I am not. So now the question for us is, “What are we going to do about it?” We know denying it will happen won’t solve the problem but make it worse.

The sting and victory of death is in the meaningless, temporary-focused, and foolish lives we live before death. But thanks God to His Son Jesus Christ that we are saved by grace. So let’s us live meaningful, eternal-focused, and wise lives to honor God’s Son who loved us till death.