Intimations of Mortality from Recollections of Late Adulthood
“For he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust.” - Psalm 103:14
We are fearfully and wonderfully made, woven together by God’s hand in the wombs of our mothers. He knows of what and for what we are made. We are “a little lower than the angels,” but God knows we are ‘of the earth, earthly’. God knows we are dust. Do we?
It is surely true that one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is that death will not come for us. We ceaselessly perpetuate this myth despite the painful daily reminders that such an assertion is utterly preposterous. A young singer dies alone; a middle-aged television star exits prematurely; a friend perishes in an accident; a child dies of incurable cancer. “But it won’t happen to us,” we say to ourselves.
TS Eliot had a more realistic perspective, one deeply rooted in Scripture. In Choruses from the Rock, he wrote,
“Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.”
We need such reminders. We need to underscore that we are currently both glory and dirt, heaven and earth, and that is one more reason why we need Ash Wednesday.
Ultimately, death is swallowed up in Christ’s victory, eaten by God as he feeds us the Feast of Life on the Mountain of the Lord (see Isaiah 25 and 1 Corinthians 15). Until that day dawns, however, we face the fact that the sting of death remains painful and the taste of death like… well, ashes. I am not home yet.
Even if one does not observe Ash Wednesday or Lent, we must be reminded that we “are dust, and to dust, we return.”
My self-deceptions on indestructibility have been dealt some hard blows by serious illness over the past few years. Yet the old lie persists, and only the truth can set me free. Even if I am not merely mortal (to quote CS Lewis), I am most assuredly truly mortal - my outer man is decaying even as my inner man is being renewed.
I must be reminded that I will face my Judge and give account, that I am bought with a price and belong body and soul, in life and death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
In J. R. R. Tolkien’s magnificent Return of the King, Sam, one of the Hobbit heroes, encounters Gandalf after he’s back from apparent death and exclaims, “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”
The answer that Christian hope offers to Sam’s question is resounding: “Yes, the sad is coming untrue” and “Behold, I saw a new heaven and a new earth . . .”
Because that day will surely dawn but has not yet come to pass, we mark Ash Wednesday with the hope of the Gospel.
Reminded by the Book of Common Prayer that “In the midst of life we are in death,” we join in prayer today, saying,
Remind us, O Gracious and Almighty God, that you will never forsake us in either, and teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. That we may do so, grant us the grace of true repentance rising from your kindness, and all for the sake of your Son, Jesus our Lord. Amen.