"I went down to the countries beneath the earth, to the nations of the past; but you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord, my God."  The Hebrew prophet Jonah, he of being swallowed by a whale fame, understood life well:  so is the fate of all nations.  None will last forever; none will endure indefinitely.

    Neither will we.  One day, we, too, will descend to the lands beneath the earth, slip out of this existence into another one, one that seems far darker than this present experience, and fade from all that we know and love, never to return.

    But this is not end of the story.  Although in Good Friday, I see the nadir of blackness, I also see death in a new light.

    Yes, we will not know what death is like until we die.  On the other hand, however, we will not really know life until it is gone.
    

      For although it can seem a cold world, a cold and insensate world that for too many of us often appears to not care one whit who we are, it is also a world that lives in the grip of resurrection.
    

    So what will you do?