From many standpoints, life seems fleeting.  Even if someone lives to be over one hundred, once that person dies, that person is gone.  And all that this person may or may not have done in his or her lifetime suddenly seems somewhat empty, swallowed up and erased by the death that has followed it.

    Depressing?  I suppose.  A few days ago, I learned that one of my most memorable teachers in seminary passed away.  He was 77.  I was shocked:  few of us, at least in the West, expect to leave this world at that age.  As I've been reflecting on my teacher's passing, I have thought deeply about the fact of eternity that runs through and undergirds the entirety of how Christians view life and reality.    If there is an eternity at the end of this earthly life, then faith makes the highest possible sense; if there is not an eternity, faith makes no sense at all.

    Therefore, if, as the New Testament account makes clear, Jesus rose from the dead, then everything about this life changes.  However finite, bleak, fleeting or, alternately, joyous or meaningful we may suppose this life to be, it is, in the big picture, simply a ground and harbinger of what lies beyond it.  Of what will follow it.  It is, as poet Emily Dickinson observed, "Not conclusion; There is a species beyond."

    Rest well, Mark.