Clarifying Your Mission In MidlifeSýnishorn

Immortal—How can you find clarity in a casket?

Life’s most unpleasant certainty is this: We are going to die. No matter how hard we try to fight it or forget it, we all have an expiration date. Statistically, in our 40s, we are closer to the tomb than the womb.

Death is impossible to ignore during midlife. We watch our parents’ bodies break down, prompting us to mentally prepare for life without them. Almost no one makes it to midlife without walking through a cemetery. And many have prepaid with unspeakable grief earlier in life.

Qoheleth states that it is better to enter a house of mourning than a house of feasting, to weep in sorrow rather than laugh in joy. He values how death brings life into focus.

You’ve probably experienced that yourself already. Almost everyone walks away from a funeral a bit more thankful for the life and loved ones they have. We feel a little more love, a little more gratitude, a little more urgency to make every day count. We realize we have no dominion over death—but we do have control over our daily decisions. We can make better, more purposeful choices—and often at a funeral, we determine to do so.

The question facing us is, “How can we take this to heart?” How do we incorporate both the reality of death and the felicity of life into the motivational center of our souls?

Our midlife brushes with mortality offer us an invitation. Not that we can do or say anything to redeem our own lives—only God can do that—but that we get to live intentionally, as those who have already been redeemed.

Basic to Christianity is a willingness to die, to take up your cross daily and follow Jesus. And this process, rather than wear us down, mysteriously infuses us with life.

Perhaps nowhere else is the contrast between over- and under-the-sun perspectives more pronounced. Under the sun, we see caskets. But taking on God’s view, we see grace. We see victory. We see death evaporating into a new dimension of life. Jesus has promised He will prepare a place for us.

And that changes everything. Therefore, we can say with confidence,

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (I Corinthians 15:55)