In unexpectedly (and very happily) reconnecting last week with some old college friends, most of whom I had not seen in nearly (and I guess this dates me!) forty years, and hearing about their journeys, I was grateful to see that whatever wild and crazy things we had done in those heady times, we have as a whole landed on our feet, created and cultivated meaningful lives, and found a measure of equanimity with and solace in the wonders and contingencies of the universe.  It's all, as the phrase goes, good.
     And so it is.  As I reflected on this, I found myself struck, though in a profoundly new way, by the beginning of the second verse of the ninth chapter of Ecclesiastes, which reads, "There is one fate for all . . . "  In other words, we all will one day die.  It's inevitable.  Despite the wonder and glory of our lives, we are headed, sooner or later, toward their end.  We are marching toward death.
     Is this despressing?  Of course it is.  Who wants to contemplate one's death?  Yet the enormously sad truth is that one day our death will come.  And we will not be able to do a thing about it.  Our lives will be over.  Final chapter, end of story.
     Though the writer tries to temper this fearsome truth by encouraging, in subsequent verses, his readers to enjoy life with those they love (verse 9) and to do whatever their minds and hearts lead them to do (verse 10), he always returns to the ineluctable point:  one day it will all end.
     Consider, however, this:  regardless of whether the world has leapt randomly forth as one actuality of an infinite number of possibilities or was fashioned as the conscious and deliberate actuality of an infinite God, its end must logically be shrouded in infinite possibilities as well.  If this is so, then why would there not be a resurrection?  Why would there not be an afterlife, a life in which we would go on living, albeit in different form, indefinitely and forever?  Why would not this life, the product of infinite possibility, also be the ground of infinite possibilities of infinite duration?  Anything is possible.
     Even, I dare say, God.  If God is there--and we have no good reason to think he is not--life cannot be other than eternal.
     Rejoice.