A few weeks ago, I noticed a Facebook posting from a Muslim friend of mine saying that, sadly, his mother had died.  "I pray," he wrote, "that Allah will forgive her sins and that she will go to the Jannah Firdu."  [Jannah Firdu is the highest level of the Muslim Paradise.]  How simple (in the richest sense) is my friend's perception of reality.  When we live, we live being obedient to Allah, and when we die, we die falling into Allah's arms.  There's no gray.  Whether we live or die, we are Allah's.
     Writing from a different standpoint yet voicing similar sentiments, the apostle Paul said in his letter to the church at Philippi, "To live is Christ, to die is gain."  Whether we live or die, we belong to God.  Whether we are here not elsewhere, we do so in the arms of the Creator.
     I sent a card to my friend, telling him how sorry I was and that I would be praying for him.  Having lost my own mother a little over four years ago, I know firsthand how difficult a loss it can be.  Indeed, it is one from which I--and he--will likely never get over.  But we carry on, believing, trusting, bending ourselves to a reality which we will never undo.
     Whether we are Christians, Muslims, or adherents of other faith traditions, we know and believe that life is at once immensely complex and innately simple:  it comes, it goes, then, singularly and profoundly, it comes again.  When death therefore comes, all that will be left of us is that from which we and everything else have come:  God.
     We know we're coming back.