“Wake up, I will show you how to die better”

“Wake-up, I will show you how to die better” – Cady Moore

 

I am driving and I hear my two girls playing in the back seat. Cady, my oldest child, is always the architect of the games that she and her sister, Cianna, play together. So hearing Cady tell Cianna how she should play a game is very common. But this time the  phrase above rang out in my mind for days. “Wake up, I will show you how to die better.” Out of her young mouth came this phrase so deep rich meaning and meaning on multiple levels depending on your perspective.

 

What stood out to me was that Cady knew that Cianna had to wake up (out of her pretend death) to learn Cady’s better way to die. When someone dies there life is what is looked at to determine if they died well. Surely, you have those who in a moment give themselves in a heroic/sacrificial death at times but I would suggest that even in those cases it was living in a life that was awake with purpose, meaning, and value that would was the seed that flowered into their heroic/sacrificial death. A good death is determined by the life that preceded it. When we are sleeping through life that is a death in itself. So friends, if you find me sleeping life away, please wake me up so that I can die better.

Death to life. The spiritual order of things.

"Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal." - Jesus The Message 

Today is Easter and the topic I most often I hear about at easter is Jesus' sacrifice and resurrection. This is always a powerful message, but today I am intrigued by Jesus' invitation to join him in his death, so that life can be attained. Death tends to bring out fear in most of us but Jesus says without dying we miss life. I suppose that the pain of sacrifice and the unknown of death is the reason it strikes so much fear in us. Death seems so final. Yet according to Jesus the death or sacrifice of the life that we live now is the door that opens us to real living. I don't begin to claim to understand all of this but I what I do know is the thing that pushes me to hold on to this life is my fear of losing it. So, I wonder if I live a life dominated by the fear of losing it, is that really living anyway. It seems that a true life of freedom can only be found in the ability to freely give up the life we have now, then our fear of losing this life won't keep us from the one promised by God.