Of all the places we can go to learn something, it seems the cemetery is one of the most profound. It teaches us something pretty fundamental: that eventually, we all end up in the same state of affairs as the people we’re walking past. The people here—the ones represented by these tombstones—were all alive at one point. They lived lives. Now, those lives were probably all different—different dreams, different ambitions, some realized and some not—but they were lives, nonetheless. They lived, and now they aren't here on the earth anymore. And that’s what’s going to happen to each one of us. One day, we join them in that same fate.

       And even though we know the end is certain, we find ourselves distracted by the timing. When you walk around and look at the stones, you start to notice the different lengths of life. They vary so much—from infancy all the way to over a hundred years. Most people, it seems, go into their 70s or 80s. A few make it to their 90s. But then you see the ones who died in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. And then there are the fewer numbers—the ones who didn't make it past those years. What that shows us is that we never really know how much time we’re going to get. We don't know how much is left. We try to guess, of course. We presume about the future because, honestly, it’s a morbid thing to expect to die young.

       But it’s not just the length of life. It’s the stones themselves—the grand ones and the small ones. The contrast is stark. Some are weathered by time, some look brand new. You can see the wealth of a family in a monument, or the lack of it. And yet, despite all that wealth, the fate of the rich and the poor is exactly the same. That’s just how it works for us. It doesn’t matter who you are, how famous you are, or how much you can accumulate during this time we call life. You can inherit it, or you can work your whole life to get it, but you still die—and it doesn’t go with you. You can look at that as a sad state of affairs, or as a way to keep our motivations in check. It's up to us to choose how we view it.

       Now, if we look closer at the stones—past the names and past the symbols of wealth—there is another detail that carries more weight than anything else it seems. It's that little dash in between the dates. If you stop and really think about it, that’s the only part that actually matters. It’s not really the birth year, and it’s not even the death date. What matters is what happened in the in-between. What happened during that little dash. That’s what we call life. It is Solomon told us in Ecclesiastes: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (3:1, ESV). That’s what we do, or what happens to us. Now, some of it we have control over, and a lot of it we don’t. A lot of life is just... outside of our own control. But we do have a say in some matters, and we definitely have a say in the perspective we take. A lot of people don't realize that. They think they have to label everything as 'good' or 'bad' and just react to it, but we really can choose how we think.

       Everyone around us here had a story. They lived a life. We can't control the start date or the end date that gets chiseled into the stone, but there is that one thing we can control: the dash. And even that is limited, because we have different genetic makeups. We have things we’re good at and things we aren't. Sometimes that’s just genes, or gifts from God. Both Peter and Paul told us that we are gifted certain things from God. And sure, we can hone our natural skills. We can decide we like something and work at it. But if the natural ability isn't there, we only go so far. The point is, we do have some control, and we can use it in a positive way.

       Each of these people had to choose how they framed their lives. A lot of us don't understand the power of framing, but it can actually be quite useful. Some people believed everything—good or bad—was just 'meant' to be. Honestly, to the speaker, that feels like an unfortunate, fatalistic way to live. It’s like saying you can’t get out of what life deals to you. Then there are those who believed the world was a fairer place—a place where free will matters and where we can actually make positive changes. Where the future doesn't have to be bleak, but can be helped instead of just accepted. It brings to mind the famous quote from Robert F. Kennedy, where he said, “Some men see things as they are and say, why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?” Those were the people who tried to grab life by the horns.

       Ultimately, the way we frame our own perspective often comes down to what we believe about our Creator. Think about it. If God is our creator, the most important question we can ask is: what is our relationship with Him? It seems, without that, aren't we missing out on a huge part of life? Some might even say that's why we were created in the first place—to be in relationship with the Creator. Besides, whatever we learn about religion affects how we live—whether we live in ways that are good for ourselves and others, or destructive. What we believe about the supernatural has an impact. And truly, it seems fair to say that we all believe something. That's just Nature. That accords with Reason. Even if you choose not to believe in a supernatural realm at all, that belief is still something.

       But what’s the importance of that relationship? If we’re going to spend the next life with God, we should probably know who He is, right? It seems pretty important. Of course, there’s the danger of not spending that next life with Him. It can be easy to brush off warnings of Hell as ‘cheesy,’ or out-dated, but the stakes are incredibly high. Beyond that, knowing God changes however we live in the here and now. Our faith does not guarantee us immunity from hardships in life—hard times come to everyone. A relationship with God means having the best support system we can have through whatever life throws at us. Knowing God isn't about using a superstitious belief to ward off harm—God doesn’t work that way. Bad things are going to happen, and good things are going to happen—and there is profound purpose in knowing the Creator while navigating both.

       And, again, there is no place that forces you to sit with the concept of a Creator quite like this cemetery. The cemetery is such a quiet place—it almost feels like a park. As you walk around, it really lets you take everything in. You might see a deer, or a fox, or probably a squirrel—they seem to be everywhere. All that busyness that occurred in each life... it’s all gone to silence now. Isn’t that an interesting contrast? From busyness to silence. From movement to no movement at all. It’s amazing. All these things we do every day, all these things we think are so important... are they really? We have to stop and evaluate that. We have to consider it because we are going to become like each of the people buried here beneath our feet. One day, it’s all going to stop.

       Think about everything that happens in a life. People have parents, or they don't. They have siblings, or they lose them. They go to school, they work, they make money, they lose it. They build a reputation—it grows, or it's damaged, or it was never there to begin with. People go to court. They marry, and they give their children away in marriage. Some marriages last, some don't—whether it's divorce or death that ends them. Houses are rented, bought, and sold. Roommates come and go. Health is built up, and then, by our own choices or by forces outside of us or even within us, it steadily declines.

       The people beneath our feet have already done all of that. They've been through it all to some degree. If they could talk, they'd tell us about it. Maybe they left a book behind somewhere where they did tell the story. But that's the sober reality: anything we gain, anything we acquire, eventually has to be given up. It’s arguably never really ours to begin with, because the moment we die, it belongs to someone else. So, how is it ours if we can't hold onto it? It's not just stuff—it's our health, too. That isn't ours either; it leaves and goes away in some way, shape, or form.

       When the speaker was about nine years old, an aunt passed away. Everyone knew it was coming for about six months, which in that sense was good—it gave us time to say our goodbyes. But as a kid, true understanding of what was happening just really wasn’t present. It was understood that it was sad. She seemed fine a few months before it all happened. She’d even spent a couple of days babysitting the younger brother and the speaker. And then, a few months later, she was just... gone. Afterward, a fear of death developed inside the mind. It was wondered if someone close by would end up with the same fate. It caused so much anxiety that there was great discomfort being alone without an authority figure.

       It’s hard to truly grasp this—that life is temporary and everything will be given up. It’s easy to understand on paper, but actually feeling it is something most people don't fully grasp. We all remember the story where it hit Jesus, where he first really grasped it. Indeed, personally, it wasn’t better understood until a favorite online YouTube content creator passed away. He was living day after day, and then one day he was just gone—unexpectedly, even though he seemed healthy. That's when it finally laid hold on the personal mind. There was a great realization that life isn't permanent. You really can't take anything for granted. Some of us need that jolt, because not everyone dies 'per the script.' You don't always see it coming, and it doesn't always happen at the 'right' time.

       Interestingly, Jesus actually talked about this very concept in the story told during his earthly ministry. You probably remember it—it’s in Luke 12, and it’s called the Parable of the Rich Fool. In this story, Jesus describes a wealthy farmer whose land produced an incredible excess of crops. Now, the man could have been content with what he already had and just given the extra to those in need, but he didn’t do that. Instead, he decided to just... store it all. We won't read the whole story today, but there’s one specific verse we really need to focus on. It’s verse 20. It says, “But God said to him, Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (ESV). That’s really what we’ve been talking about. That’s the perspective shift we need.

       Ben Franklin once remarked, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.” That really hits to the heart, doesn't it? And there is also a favorite quote—one that’s been held onto for about a decade now—attributed to the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. One day he said, "I never make predictions. I never have, and I never will." That’s a favorite one, truly a favorite one. It speaks so much to the sheer uncertainty of the future—how nothing is actually guaranteed. It shows us that no matter how much we think we know, or how much we imagine what’s going to happen, often, it just doesn't. That’s a reality a lot of us need to pay attention to. But the mind can be deceptive; we can trick ourselves into thinking we’re pretty good at predicting things, when in reality, we almost always are not. Truth is, it would be guessed that maybe one in twenty things is predicted completely right, another is partially right, and the other eighteen? Not even close. Keep track. Write out it, and you will see.

       We can't predict the future—we're just not that good at it. But there is one thing that is actually quite predictable, at least in the way we experience it. A lot of us have the same experience where, when we're young, the people we expect to die eventually do. The elderly folks at church, family friends, our grandparents—they pass away, and we think, "Well, that’s just the way it goes." We see that predictability and assume that’s the script: we live old and we die. Then, maybe there’s an anomaly here or there. An aunt passes away at 50, and we think, "Wow, that was weird." Or a friend's brother dies at ten, and we think, "What an anomaly; you don't see that very often.” So, unless you happen to be one of the few people close to someone who dies unexpectedly, death can feel like a distant thing. It doesn't really hit us—not until someone we actually knew well passes away. Then, suddenly, it hits. We say, "Wait. That wasn't supposed to happen. What happened?" That’s when the reality settles in.

       And it doesn't seem like even big national events really "hit" us in that same way. We live in a world where we are regularly presented with ‘big,’ tragic events. Things like COVID-19 ravaging lives, or natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes. There’s a strange, psychological distance often in them. Numbers on graphs don’t make us grieve. We see people going about and helping others—and the idea is that we we should care like they do. But, truth be told, these things don't feel personal unless you really knew someone close who lost their life, which, honestly, for a lot of us is pretty rare. This is when it becomes real—when it’s reduced to a single person. Most of us don't have that personal connection to a tragedy. But if we do, it hits hard. When it’s a person you loved—someone whose chair is now empty at the dinner table, or whose voice only now exists inside our head. Yes, that’s when death finally enters our reality.

       So, if these big, distant events don't really hit us, it’s because they feel completely disconnected from our day-to-day reality. We need to pause and consider our own lives for a second. There’s another Ben Franklin quote that captures this perfectly: "Our bodies are only lent us, to be enjoyed and employed in good actions while we continue in them." And that’s the point, right? We should be seeking to do good. It’s amazing—and honestly a bit sad—how much care and money people spend toward the very end of their lives trying to keep themselves in this world, even though they might not have taken great care of themselves during the many years before, or even done much good for themselves during their earlier years.

       But what is the point of all this? The point is that if we realize we aren't going to live forever—if we accept that life isn't going to just carry on indefinitely like it always has—then maybe we can finally wake up. Maybe we can "stop and smell the roses." Maybe we won't hold onto possessions as if they are the only thing that matters. Maybe we'll enjoy our time with people more while they are actually here with us, instead of having our minds occupied by work or some other perceived problem. Maybe we’ll lighten up. Maybe we won't take everything so seriously. Do we ever stop to realize that this might be the last time we are with certain people? It could be the last time a specific group of people is together exactly as they are right now—whether that's family, friends, or a church group, or whatever.

       There have been many times in the speaker’s own life where time was spent with a group of people, and it wasn't realized until later that it would be the last time. You can probably relate. Maybe it was a group of college friends. You hang out one last time, and in that moment, you have no idea. But then people get married, have kids, and before you know it, that group probably isn't ever going to be together in the same way again. Or maybe it’s a family gathering—and six months later, your brother gets a divorce. So, there, last Christmas was the last time you ever visited their house and saw them together. Or maybe it's the church you’re spending the holidays with this year, but you won't be with them next year because you got a job offer and moved. You didn't see that coming, and now you won't spend another Christmas with this group of Christians, at least not in this life.

       Life passes us by, and we don't even realize it. Events come and go, and we aren't fully present for them, so we miss out on the joy of them. That’s the heart of this. We need to become more aware of what is happening in our lives. We need to be aware that "now" will not continue forever. We know that famous passage from James—it’s probably already crossed your mind—where James says, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:13-15, ESV). What we find here is that our lives aren't really in our control—not like we think they are. Anyone of us can leave at any time, against our own personal wishes. It’s a sobering reminder. That’s the problem with so many of us; we presume upon the future. We think our time is on some unlimited plan and that it will never run out.

       It’s sobering, isn't it? This whole idea that we are just a mist. And yet, we have to wonder—why is it so hard for us to accept that? Why is it that despite knowing this, we still spend so much energy planning? It’s a kind of a mystery. For one, it seems like we want to control everything to make sure we have the "best" life possible. And yet we know—or should know by now—that no matter how much we try to control things, we can’t. And then there's the tendency to want to be like everyone else—to have what they have and be equal with them. It’s almost a petty thing. Why does it really matter what’s going on with others? Why do we care so much? Yet, if we’re honest, we do care greatly. It can be such a burden that it makes life hard to bear. We wonder why that person got this and we didn't. We wonder how they made so much money, and where our own money went—where it all just disappeared to. It’s just one thing after another.

       We talked about our relationship with God earlier, and developing that—rather than not having one at all—is a cause worthy of spending our time on. Besides, as we get to know God more, we find that some of those natural impulses—the bad things we do, the things that come from the "bad" part of us—become less desirable to us as we go along. Isn't that a good thing? Don't we want to grow into better people? Now, we don't act "good" in every single area. We have good things about some of what we do, certainly. That’s true for everyone. But can't God steer us in the right direction when we know him? Instead of being like the man in the parable, who just wanted to put his crops in storage, we can be people who don't need to hoard. We can realize the importance of others, and the temporariness of this life, and find that it’s actually okay. It doesn't have to bother us anymore.

       Look, we can have our materialism; that’s fine to a degree. We all like "things"—that’s just natural and realistic. But it’s also true that we can get too caught up in the keeping. We can get these cognitive blocks from our childhood where we feel we need to hoard everything, and we become unwilling to give things away to help someone else. Again, we can't keep it all anyway. We ought spend some of our focus on what we can contribute to the world rather than what we can pile up in a barn. We often don’t even have the time to enjoy all the things we accumulate. It’s actually pretty sad when you think about it. Because you only have so much time, there is only so much "bandwidth" to actually enjoy things. Having too many possessions means we can’t enjoy the other parts of life.

       A big part of what’s being laid out here—and this is really important—is that we need to actually enjoy our lives as they come to us. It’s so easy, isn't it? It’s just so easy to get caught up in our problems. We get tangled in the little things—the minuscule, daily frustrations we just expect to deal with—and then we get swept up in the big life events, too. We get so busy dealing with the "how" of living that we forget to enjoy the fact that we are living at all. It is a concrete belief that we are supposed to enjoy our time here on this earth. After all, look at what Peter said when he was quoting a Psalm: ““Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it” (1 Peter 3:10, 11, ESV). A lot of people have this idea—maybe they’ve been told it—that we’re just supposed to suffer. That suffering is the only way to be "good." But that just doesn't fit with the idea that God would have created us simply to endure misery. And let’s be honest about the world we live in; we have freedom of religion here, so for the vast majority of us, we aren't suffering for our beliefs in the way people used to. That is all the more reason for us to enjoy our lives. If we aren't being persecuted for our faith, then why wouldn't we seek to find joy in the life we've been given?

       And that leads to something else: the importance of having hobbies. It can't all be work, you know. The quality of our work actually increases when we make a real, intentional effort to rest. There's even a quote by John Adams where he wrote in his journal, “Musing on deeply, or rather planning, executing, and staring at a text wears out the spirit... I must take more care of my health, and give more time to relaxation.” The point is that we have to rest rather than just work. And we have to realize that everyone finds rest differently. Some people love a traveling vacation; some don't. The speaker personally likes them, but the younger brother, for instance, does not. We all find different things appealing. Some people like the movies, others don't. Some people like to jog, some like to bicycle, and some don't like either. It doesn't matter what the specific hobby is; what matters is that God doesn't want us walking around constantly overworked and exhausted. We have to learn to enjoy the time we have. And really, it seems fair to say, unless we keep death in perspective—which is what we're talking about today—it’s very hard to do. We have to remember that we will die, and that we could die at any moment.

       Now, what’s not being said here is that we should just stop working or stop being productive altogether. That’s not what’s being said. There's a common misconception that because we see Jesus ministering constantly in the Gospels, that's the only way to 'serve' God. We see him walking around, ministering to people, and we think that means everyone needs to spend their lives doing exactly that. And there is certainly a place for that—if your talents call you to a service-type role, similar to his, then that is a beautiful thing. But for most of us, that isn't going to be the case. There’s a difference between being overworked and being called. Our different roles—whether that's a job, a home, or a ministry—all require us to be rested and present. We all have different roles. Whether it’s within the church or just in regular society, we all have our places. We have jobs. If a woman decides to be a homemaker, she stays at home with the children. If it’s the reverse, and that works for the couple, then that it is fine. Whatever our God-given roles are, that’s what they are.

       But when we cultivate that awareness—that awareness that our lives are precious and our time is precious—everything changes. We have to realize that time, once it passes us by, does not return. That exact moment is gone forever. Once we are aware of that, we can start to soak more into what we are doing, whatever those responsibilities may be, rather than rushing through things. We can live out and be present to the things God has equipped us to do, so that we can, again, have a more fulfilling life. You know, Jesus said he came so that we might have life, and have it abundantly. It’s a shame how often we forget that in the busyness of our own lives. But it’s time to actually go and live that.