At the beginning of a seminar I attended several years ago, we were given the following three questions to consider.
- If you could decide, at what age would you like to die?
- If you were able to write your own obituary, what would you write?
- If you could choose, what would you have written on your gravestone?
For some reason I was able to answer the first question quite easily. Perhaps because I had spent some time earlier that year meditating on my remaining years.
It took much longer to answer question two, because it required that I spend time recalling my life up to that point and thinking about what it is I actually wanted to set as my goal for the remainder of my life.
As I was reflecting on this question, one thing about my life became particularly clear. I felt that even though I had had various fulfilling experiences and I believed that each experience had deep meaning for me, when I looked at them as a whole, it seemed as though they were randomly scattered along both sides of my path with no sense of unity. It became clear to me that even though I had many desires and dreams for the future, there was not a unifying theme to connect the various elements of my life.
I was shocked by the realization that if I continued to live my life as I was, it was unlikely my life could ever be expressed as a unity when my life here on earth came to an end.
Why was my life so fragmented? Why were my past experiences so disconnected? As I wrote last time, it was because I was not reflecting on the meaning of my experiences. If we do not ask ourselves questions such as, ‘What is the significance of this experience?’ and ‘What is God trying to say to me through this?’ and ‘How am I being called to live in the present circumstances?’ then our lives become very fragmented. If our sense of calling about our very existence and the purpose of our lives (a deeper question than profession or mission) are not clear, then there will be no unifying strand to pull together our meandering lives. The second question made clear to me what was lacking in my own life and in my lifestyle.
The answer to the third question was naturally the most difficult. That is because I wanted to have engraved on my gravestone words that would reflect what I valued most in my life, my life’s goal, or the very thing I wanted to aim for in life—what am I living for?
I meditated on this question for many days and as I continued to meditate daily on Scripture, I began to think that it was imperative that the words on my gravestone were for me a statement of my identity (Who am I really?). And, I found a word of scripture from one of the texts that spoke very clearly to me, ‘This is it!’
‘However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’ (Luke 10:20)
Jesus’ disciples, having been sent out by him, rejoiced in the power to make evil spirits submit to them and in having accomplished mighty acts. But the Lord said, ‘Don’t rejoice over such things, your worth is not to be found in your power or abilities, nor in your performance of great acts. Your worth is determined by the fact that you are a child of the Heavenly Father, that your names (your true identities) are recorded in heaven. Rejoice in this!’
Up until that point I had been defining my worth by what I could do, by what I had accomplished, but from that time on I thought that I wanted to live my life in the great joy that my name is written in heaven!
Several years after that seminar, I actually found myself in a situation where I had to buy a cemetery plot and I purchased a grave with a small gravestone. Someday perhaps these words, given to me before the stone itself, may be engraved on it,
‘Rejoice, your name is written in heaven!’